


The (Second) Book of James

by SLWalker



Series: The (Second) Book of James [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel & Vessel Interactions, Canon compliant through S9, Episode: s05e02 Good God Y'all!, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, Episode: s05e06 I Believe The Children Are Our Future, Episode: s05e08 Changing Channels, Episode: s05e10 Abandon All Hope..., Episode: s05e13 The Song Remains the Same, Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Episode: s05e17 99 Problems, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Gen, Jossed by S10, Pre-Slash, Reapers, Season/Series 05, Season/Series 07, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-10 19:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 84,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2036502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy Novak didn't know what to expect when he was finally able to contact Castiel years after they were blown to bits in Stull Cemetery, but he certainly wasn't expecting to find his angel catatonic and suicidal, nor did he expect his tampering around with the mechanics of Heaven to draw the attention of the new de facto ruler, Naomi.  From there, it becomes a chase across the celestial sphere, where Jimmy has to use every trick he knows and the help of two unlikely allies in order to try to save both himself and Cas one more time.  And all the while, the story of how exactly he went from what was essentially the victim of an angelic kidnapping to the nicknamed Angel Whisperer is revealed... and how he gave an angel back the heart to sing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I.

[Art Masterpost](http://sophiap.livejournal.com/263082.html)

Many, many thanks to my incredible betas and cheerleaders. kalijean, who got me into this fandom and read this as I wrote it, maguena, my best friend who has been behind me all these years, shadowsong26, for taking the time and effort to comment and check for plotholes, Taylor, my e-niece whose enthusiasm and meta about it kept me smiling for hours and sophiap for the incredible art that made me cry.

You can find the soundtrack -- which is pretty vital to the story -- (with the art) [**here**](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-ytr81zFajNak1HOHFfeWFTSm8&usp=drive_web).  
You can download it as a .zip [**here**](https://mega.co.nz/#!E5YXzRgB!MEwn3p8Rh8Fs0lYPIS--5cw62KgfUrV5sVWPHEbTgVA).

* * *

**I.**

**2011**

Their story begins and it ends the same way. It is not the first beginning, or the first ending. But it begins and ends the same way regardless.

It begins with a song.

Their song had started out with six beats; had originally started with him offering out _holy, holy, holy_ , had later evolved into a call and response, then harmonized and split and merged again; again and again.

Angelic voices were nothing like human voices, but music was first their truce and then their touchstone.

Their song had evolved with six beats, with his regrets -- _I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ \-- then branched out to other music; singing and sang to, when everything else had become silence. Sometimes, even mired in war and conspiracy, in paranoia and pride and guilt and desperation, he still found himself listening into the dark, past the voices of friends, of enemies, and past the voices of his own history, in some wistful, naive notion that he might get back the answer he wanted; a little three-note, six beat song.

Which meant, of course, that someday he _would_.

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

No.

It was foolish to answer hallucinations. This, he knew. It would only invite more. For the sake of the mortals around him -- he knew where he was -- he couldn't afford to give them any more purchase than he already had.

But oh, he missed that voice.

"I know you can hear me."

He wasn't sure if this particular hallucination was more pain or the relief of pain. Lucifer in his own visage, at least, was a straight-forward foe once he got over the instinctive terror of being in the presence of an archangel, even hallucinated. And the others, they were well-deserved. Brothers, sisters, friends. He knew their names, every one. No call and response; he took their anger at his betrayal with no wish to escape it, bore the brunt of their imagined rage and accepted it as well-earned. They were only in his own mind, a product of his own broken thoughts, but he owed them that much at least and they needed someone to remember them. So, then, let it be him.

He needed no voice to accept that punishment.

"I'm not here to hurt you."

Lucifer often said the same; sympathized and appealed to pride, their mutual downfall. But to do so with this voice was a master stroke of cruelty.

More pain, then. So be it.

 

 

 

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

No.

"Do you remember, Cas?"

Yes. Of course he did. But it was all in his own mind, so he remembered, and therefore all of the hallucinations remembered as well, which meant there was nothing in that voice that was _real_ ; it was a trick, a cruel trick, to use the one ghost that he could never truly outrun.

 

 

 

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

No.

"I wish you'd look at me."

He had shut down everything he could of himself; blocking as much as he could out, narrowing his perception as far as it could be narrowed. Until even the songs of his remaining -- _too few_ \-- brethren were nothing more than a whisper in this back of his borrowed skull, but he couldn't stop _this song_ , clear and bright and aching. It kept returning, in minutes or hours or weeks, in the lost time between the spaces between the breaths he didn't need to take.

The voice softened; a call, "I know you cried my name."

It was the first sound he'd made in a long time, out there in reality; pain through ground teeth. A hoarse note from a human's throat; the shiver of windows from an angel's voice.

 

 

 

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

No.

"You should listen to me. I know you can hear me."

He bit back the thousands of answers; in English, in Hebrew, in Greek, in Enochian, in Latin, across time and space and dimension.

All languages. All lamentations.

 

 

 

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

"--I'm so very tired."

It was a mistake. It was a mistake to respond to the things in his head -- _all his own things_ \-- because it gave them a grip on him that he knew he couldn't control. If he ever had control. If control wasn't some illusion, some arrogance he'd assumed without thought countless eons ago.

It wasn't the first time he'd broken in his lifetime.

"I know, I know--" there was no derision in that voice; just worry and somehow, somehow that hurt worse "--I know. Will you please look at me?"

"I don't think I'm ready," he answered, raw honesty.

 

 

 

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

"--You can't really be here," he said, or thought, or felt.

There was no way it could be real and giving into the urge to respond to it was foolish. Desperately so. He knew that voice. When he'd lost all others, when he'd lost all _hope_ , it was the one voice he still had left in his mind that wasn't his own echoing endlessly in the darkness, and the one thing that stood between him and being _alone_.

"I wish you'd look and see."

"I don't deserve to look."

"Since when did that matter?" There was a scoff, there; gentle, though, for all of its impatience. Then it turned worried again, asking, "Will you please look at me?"

"I can't; will you please stop?" It came out more a plea than he would have ever wanted. "You can't really be here."

"I'm not going to stop. You'll die there if I do."

It wasn't technically true. He could linger in perpetuity, without the least ill effect, except what he would inadvertently cause by giving into the madness clawing through him, and none of that would actually hurt _him_. So, he wouldn't die. Well, not unless Meg decided to kill him, in which case it would be true, but he didn't actually think that she would. Nor would he care if she did.

"You might not, but I do. Please, will you look at me?"

It wasn't the first time he'd broken in his lifetime.

Or the second. Or--

 

 

 

There were so many things to regret. Including, sometimes, the ability to regret. But he wouldn't give it back.

In fact, if he were to lay it all out, he'd have far more regrets than things he refused to regret.

Regret. Six letters; to feel sad, disappointed, repentant, remorseful, contrite. If free will was a length of rope, then regret was the noose, and maybe his hallucination of his ghost was right. Maybe he would die here. Maybe he deserved to.

 

 

 

"Why are you here, Jimmy?"

Jimmy Novak looked back at him through the veil, searching and serious and kind, and impatient and stubborn and affectionate, and oh, it hurt. "Because you needed me."

 

 

 

_Do you know how to sing?_ Jimmy Novak's quiet, still awed voice asked, years ago.

_Yes,_ he had answered, surprising himself with it, years ago. _I remember how to sing._

 

 

 

 

He regretted that in those hours following the aborted apocalypse, the end of the end times, that he was burning so bright that he didn't realize that he was _alone_. Heaven's newest seraph. (Heaven's last seraph, now.) Because he could hear the Host again, the never-ending song that he had known from his very first moment. Because he could hear, over and under the song, the chaotic but _present_ chatter of all of his siblings, so loud after all of the quiet before. Because he could feel the stretch of his wings, because he couldn't feel the lingering human aches, because he could heal and fight and fly again. Because he wasn't cut off any longer. Because he could return home, for the first time in so long.

Because his Father loved him.

He regretted that in his zeal and joy, in the feeling of brightness and freedom, he missed so many things.

Three of those burned brighter than the rest, and all three had names.

Regret was a noose. He could never find the right answer, looking backwards. Should he have stayed with Dean? Should he have dove into the Pit more quickly for Sam? Should-- should-- should--

 

 

 

To keen is to wail in lamentation for the dead.

Because he had turned inward when the thoughtless euphoria settled to joy, because he called out for Jimmy, because he wanted to show off the glory of the universe from this height-depth-distance, because he wanted to share it and it seemed by now as natural as flight to share it with Jimmy, who he expected to be right there in the light with him (he could still _feel_ him there), so he called

and no one answered

and he sang

and no one answered.

The Host sang _holy, holy, holy_  


 

 

"Because you still need me," Jimmy said, with certainty, holding out his hand. "C'mon, come back to me." 

 

 

and Castiel keened

_Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy._

In English, in Hebrew, in Greek, in Enochian, in Latin, across time and space and dimension.

All languages. All lamentations.

 

 

Grief was a selfish thing. Jimmy was free; free of pain, free of sorrow. He would never want again, never hurt again. Their last months were hard and brutal and unrelenting. Now, he would live eternity in peace, enjoying his eternal reward, in whatever paradise he could fashion of his own life. It should be a call to celebration, even (especially) for an angel, not-- not--

Grief was a selfish thing, an individual (forbidden) thing, and oh, it was no wonder they were so discouraged from feeling these things. It was no wonder, it was no wonder, because it was maddening, this hollow space and echoing quiet, of something irreplaceable lost

 

 

 

"I lost you, _I lost you_."

Jimmy raised his eyebrows, gesturing with his hand like the fact that Castiel would take it was a foregone conclusion. "And I found you again. So c'mon, come with me."

 

 

 

but the one thing he never regretted was that in the time between when he flew in exaltation to when he blasted scorched into Hell after Sam, he sang his sorrow, the bleeding edge of his grief, across the stars for all to hear.

 

 

 

Jimmy didn't look away. It was inevitable, he would turn. They all did; old friends, siblings, come to visit, before turning to whisper regret and regret and regret. They could lay out his crimes with cutting precision; crimes against God, crimes against his family, crimes against humanity, while he dangled at the bottom of his rope and strangled on it. It was a fitting penance.

He just wished-- wished--

Wishing was as unangelic as grieving; he had been built for neither.

Jimmy dropped his head, sighed in quiet frustration. Looked back up, lips pressed together, head tilted slightly to the side. "I'm not leaving you there. I'm not your punishment."

But he should be. He had to be. What else could he be?

 

 

 

"Castiel, Castiel."

_Holy, holy, holy_

_the Lord God Almighty--_

"Why must you draw this out? You should be furious!"

Desperation was also unangelic.

Jimmy sat down on a chair that hadn't been there before and leaned forward; rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands between them, and didn't flinch at the anger-frustration-fear blasted back at him. "That you called yourself God?"

"That I used your face to."

"Oh, I am. Even so."

Here, in this lost time between the spaces between the breaths he didn't need to take, he was light and grace, and he was flesh and blood, and he was broken shards of physics and mathematics scattered across time and dimension, pressed on layers of reality humanity couldn't even see, and he was also very, very small, and very aware of being small.

Jimmy gave him that half-shake of his head he did when he was stating a fact -- that Claire was not going to that party, that his neighbor was not borrowing his yard tools -- and just said, "I'm not leaving you there. So, why not come with me?"

Castiel knew how to manipulate time, and energy; knew how to tug the cosmic strings, knew how to pluck the chords of the very _universe itself_. He could see colors beyond the wildest of human imagination, hear notes beyond all human hearing; he could stare into the hearts of stars and draw his very being through lines of cosmic dust; he could remember a time before the Fall, before everything, when all he had been was joy and love and song, and he could remember what it was like to not be that anymore. He could remember being a warrior. He could remember-- remember--

Resistance to the sharp double-edge of his own sword should have been _easy_.

It wasn't the first time he'd broken in his lifetime.

Or the second, or the third, or--

 

 

 

Oblivion was a horrible, wretched thing.

He had never experienced nothing before. One moment, he wasn't. And then he was. And he _always was_ , from there on, forever on. Time has no real meaning, when you exist within it and also outside of it and can, carefully, shape it around yourself.

Oblivion was-- was--

He had known terror. Terror was the first silence; terror was a battle turning against you and the fate of your home and family in the balance; terror was realizing your brother had turned on you; terror was Dean's broken face and being unable to prevent Alistair before it was broken; terror was staring at the assembled members of the Host who were going to strip you of your affections and alliances and make you grateful for it. Terror was-- terror was--

"God brought me back for a reason," he'd tried to say, half-defensive, half-question, but he was reeling and disoriented, frightened and awed and so deeply _shaken_ by the nothingness he had just been pulled back from, and when he tried to move and act, he found to even more terror that he had no defense against the white hot lash of Jimmy Novak's rage.

Temporarily freed from his cosmic chains, Jimmy overpowered him easily in that state; the betrayal of someone who might have been his friend, but even more importantly, who now burned righteously with a father's anger. "Yeah? Guess what, he brought me back, too." There was no mercy in his indictment, sharp and biting, "Why do you suppose that is?"

 

 

 

"Because I needed you," Castiel answered, faithfully and frankly, years later, to a man he had lost and grieved.

"Because you still need me," Jimmy corrected, faithfully and frankly, years later, as though he wasn't a hallucination of a ghost at all. "I'm not leaving you there."

 

 

 

"You used me. You son of a bitch, you _used me_ , you threatened my _daughter_ ," and never once in all of that did Jimmy seem to care that he had just been murdered by an archangel, so focused was his anger, "and after I gave you _everything_."

There was absolutely nowhere to go. He was in Jimmy's recreated body not because he wanted to be there -- anywhere else right now, anywhere away from this, anywhere he could fly he would have -- but because he couldn't seem to escape. And he had no control over it. On some plane, he knew that wherever they were was outwardly cold, and that for all appearances this vessel was catatonic, but that was all.

This helplessness was not new. But it was still terrible.

"Do you even _know_ what you did?!"

"Yes." There was no where to run. "Yes, and no."

Jimmy's soul was brilliant blue-white; it was beautiful and it was deadly, and right now, it could snuff an angel's grace. Locked in one mortal form with it, _bound_ , Castiel could see it, and on another layer, Jimmy's view of himself, and on yet another layer he could _feel it_ , too, every bit of that anger and hurt, and yes, he knew what he did. And no, he couldn't know; he'd never been a father, but he knew how much Jimmy loved her, and he knew Jimmy's guilt, and he knew that--

So he answered the only way he knew how.

And he quit trying to free himself, and he tipped his head back, and he bared his metaphysical throat, and he awaited judgment.

God may have brought him back, but maybe it was just for this.

 

 

 

"You fall into that rut," Jimmy said, "and then I dig you out."

 

 

 

A thousand thoughts flew through Jimmy's head, loud to both, and they were still anger and they were still pain, and they were barbed and dangerous, and it would be a relief to have it end, even if it had to end in something so terrifying as oblivion. This was what it meant, to be suffocated and burned to ashes.

But the final blow never came.

He had brutally smothered Jimmy's consciousness since taking this vessel back, and it was only by Jimmy's force of will that he'd ever managed to surface even briefly since, usually in rage and never forgiving. Castiel expected the same back, in a much more permanent sense.

And it never came.

"No. No--" Jimmy started, then stopped. Sharp and thoughtful, but now his thoughts were far harder to read.

Outside, they trembled. Inside, there was only thought and soul and grace.

"You owe me, Castiel."

 

 

 

"I can't, please don't make me," he begged.

 

 

 

"You owe me, but I don't want your life."

He could feel that overpowering burn of Jimmy's soul, crowding him. Castiel could summon no defensiveness, no anger. He was so many things in that moment that he was poorly equipped to understand, let alone process; he was tired and confused and lost and alone, and he was certain his Father had pulled him from oblivion, but he didn't know why, and why so helpless, unless it was to give Jimmy Novak his retribution.

"I want the _truth_." Jimmy's voice was hard. "I want the truth. All of it. Why me. Why Claire. Why you came back bleeding. Why you let Sam out. Why you broke ranks. What you were _thinking_. All of it."

 

 

 

There were things more terrifying than oblivion, he'd found out, once and twice and over and over.

One of them was _surviving_.

 

 

By the time that he was finished; by the time he was done confessing his sins, recounting all of it until he was little more than shards and shreds all over again, all he had left was, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," and for the first time that he could remember, he knew exactly what being sorry felt like. Not just regret (unangelic), not just sorrow (more angelic), but _sorry_.

Sorry was Jimmy, finally backing off, and the heavy weight of his emotions. His grief. His broken faith. His loss and his guilt and his regret. But so much worse, his compassion. 

His mercy.

Sorry was not being worthy of it, and receiving it anyway.

"Guess we were both tools," Jimmy said, with a soft, sad huff. "Look, I'm not ready to forgive you, but..."

Outside and inside, they trembled.

"...I'm sorry, too."

Neither needed to say that it was for this, and for so much more than this, too.

 

 

 

He had hovered between Heaven and Hell, and he had keened, and he had bounced Jimmy's name from one corner of creation to another, and for all of his regrets, he never regretted that before going after Sam, he sang his grief for all to hear.

In English, in Hebrew, in Greek, in Enochian, in Latin, across time and space and dimension.

All languages.

All lamentations.

 

 

So, Jimmy had said wearily, "Well, I guess God brought us back for a reason."

So, Castiel had said, after a long silence where they both breathed in one body, "Lucifer has risen."

So, Jimmy had asked, "And that means what, exactly?"

So, Castiel had asked, ragged and without pride, "Will you help me?"

 

 

 

And so now Jimmy sang, _"Castiel, Castiel."_

And so now Castiel sang back, _"Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty,"_ in his own voice, ragged and without pride, _"who was and is and is to come."_

And so Jimmy huffed out a breath that bordered a sob, then two more, reaching out both hands and lacing them together behind Castiel's head, drawing him in until their foreheads were pressed together, and said, "Oh, thank everything, there you are."

And so Castiel huffed out a breath that bordered a sob, and gave up the war, and repeated over and over, "I'm so sorry, Jimmy."

And so Jimmy just answered, in between, "I know," and "It's okay," and "I'm here," and "We'll get there together."

And so this was what it meant, when it was more terrifying than oblivion, to survive.


	2. II.

**2010**

In the time between when they created a truce and when they were (literally) blown apart, they learned many things.

Jimmy Novak learned

that there are eighteen spectrums of color that an angel can see, which have no human-eye equivalent, and all of the blends, shades and hues that go with them. They are breathtakingly beautiful, but the first time he sees them, he feels like he's gone insane, and it takes him a long time to be able to look through an angel's perspective and not feel a little like he's lost an anchor to reality.

that his angel is made up of some of those colors, but mostly translates to gold and blue, with some silver-white thrown in.

that angels have exactly and precisely _no_ sense of physicality naturally, at least not any translatable to a human body. Every single move, from the first moment of his possession, that Castiel made was mined from Jimmy's muscle memory, literal memory and occasionally extrapolated from watching other humans. The result was that he got better at it with practice, and far better at it when Jimmy took a more active role, but at first every tilt of his head, every time he put his hands in his pockets, every time he sat down or stood up or walked or fought, it was all based on Jimmy; by the time Castiel put action to it, it was like a bad Babel Fish translation on the internet. No wonder he got his ass kicked so many times, early on.

that even though angels have no concept of physicality, they all love to fly anyway, even if flying for them is not quite like what a bird does. The first time Jimmy is conscious for it, he gets it. Oh, God, does he get it; it's power and joy, that stretch of ethereal wings, the beat of them, the way they beat not air but layers of reality; time actually slows, around an angel's wings. What appears instantaneous, a flutter from one place to another, stretches out to blissful moments when they fly. For that reason, maybe more than all others, angels protect their wings first and lose them last, as they fall. For that reason, Cas spends a lot of time in flight as he's falling; Jimmy spends a lot of time worrying about how he'd cope if or when he couldn't fly again.

that reality isn't just one layer. It's hundreds of layers. Even through Cas's perspective, he only sees to the depth of about sixteen before he starts to feel mad and unanchored, but with practice, he gets really damn proficient with the first eight or so, not bad with the next four; honestly, those are the most important ones anyway. He can see, in that space of fading grace, before the end, reapers and restless spirits, ley lines, hidden sigils and ancient magics, the flow of life and breath and time, and when he can open his own perspective enough, he can see the very thumbprints of _God Himself_ on creation.

that he is capable of being possessive, and very much _is_ ; that Castiel is capable of the same, and also very much _is_ , and that this is why, by unstated but mutual agreement, Jimmy never asks to be a part of his conversations with Sam and Dean, and Cas never offers. It's a self-protective instinct that Jimmy is absolutely sure Cas needs to develop better. This makes them maybe kind of co-dependent, but frankly, it's not like that's in short supply around these parts. At least they’re often gentle towards each other.

that despite that, Jimmy's more than capable of being present and often enough is. That there are plenty of times when Cas feels insecure or angry, and Jimmy crosses their arms tight; when Cas is tired and Jimmy rubs their eyes for him. By the time Cas is all but smothered in Jimmy's skin, he's long-since learned to take comfort from these small gestures, and eventually they both forget who performs them and when, just that _they are_.

that Cas, before he was a warrior, was just another voice in the choir, forever singing for his Father, and knew nothing of pain or fear or confusion or doubt, or anything really except for joy and love and song. And the choir is beautiful, because Cas let him listen to it once in awhile when he could still hear it, so Jimmy gets just how amazing it must have been, to have been a part of it. The same song, over and over, but it never gets repetitive; it hurts, to hear it, like the most perfect symphony in creation.

that they make an amazing duet, once they learn how to sing together.

that despite all of this, it took him a long time to finally forgive Cas. And that when he does, it's mostly because of the next point:

God's really a prick.

 

Jimmy Novak wishes he had never learned

that angels can scream, and do. Their voices, singing or screaming or even whispering, live on several layers of reality. Jimmy can hear many of the ones he'd lose his mind trying to see. And when they die, they scream as their wings literally burn; the beautiful, transdimensional reality of them flashing out in shock and pain, one last glorious display. He's amazed more of them don't scream on the thin layer of reality most humans live on, but they don't. They scream on higher layers, one last wail, and in death they all sound the same, no matter whose side they fight on.

that he knows what Cas sounds like when he screams. That it is, to Jimmy, one of the most heart wrenching, gut-dropping, ice-water sounds in the universe. He is grateful, sickeningly, horribly grateful, that it's only on coming out of oblivion -- that's another thing he wishes he never learned, that angels can be traumatized and suffer flashbacks -- and not immediate, because despite the fact that it paralyzes him in terror when it happens, he's able to gather his nerve and raise his own thin, one-layer human voice above it and talk his angel back to reality. If he ever had to listen to it happening without being able to act to _stop it_ , that would be the very definition of insanity.

that all of the angels are broken. Every one. Every single angel is broken. The archangels, the seraphim, the rank-and-file, every one. They are broken and so much more fragile than they should have ever been, and they don't have the capacity to understand it, which might even be the biggest crime of all. That they don't understand that they're broken, that they were wronged -- every single one -- because like physicality, they have no frame of reference.

that it's actually harder to keep angels from dying than it is teaching them how to live; they're more like lemmings than lemmings are. Jimmy only has one angel to save, and he finds it far, far harder than almost anything he has ever done.

that Cas was broken long before he flew into Hell for Dean, long before he came to whisper and speak to Jimmy. That before he was a warrior, he was a singer, and then Lucifer turned and God threw a major temper tantrum, terrifying an entire species of beings who had never known anything but love, and it was the only time in all creation that the choir fell silent. And when Castiel recounts it so matter-of-factly (when they're drunk), he doesn't understand Jimmy's rage later when Jimmy puts the pieces together, one father at another, for such a betrayal to His children. God, after all, is God. If He wants to turn His eldest son into a weapon to cast down his brother, so be it. If He wants to cast out anyone who innocently listened to Lucifer and gave him open-minded sympathy, so be it. And if He wants to turn His beautiful, bright creatures into soldiers and then bolt out and leave broken children ruling over broken children in the name of an absent father, so be it.

that therefore, Jimmy is not anywhere near father-of-the-year, but the Almighty screwed up way worse than he did.

Because God really, really is a _prick_.

 

This is what they never talk about, in order:

Dean Winchester. Because they have some fairly passionate, vastly different opinions on the elder Winchester. And without saying a word to one another, they both know better than to bring him up. Castiel asks Jimmy for no advice in dealing with Dean. Jimmy offers none. Cas thinks Dean hangs the moon. Jimmy thinks Dean's often a selfish jerk who happens to be too in love with his own damage to realize just how much his brother _and_ his angel love him. Cas is sure that Dean's often scathing, emotionally constipated attitude is simply covering up a deeper affection and kindness. Jimmy thinks Cas is delusionally blind when it comes to Dean and has all of the self-preservation instincts of... well, of an angel. So, Dean is a topic off limits.

Amelia Novak leaving no forwarding address with the Winchesters. Not that Jimmy could ever, or would ever, blame her. He doesn't feel like its a betrayal, he doesn't expect to have a wife if or when this is over, he just hopes and prays that she and Claire will be all right someday. Cas offers, before flight becomes real effort, to try to find them. Jimmy's non-answer speaks for itself. He doesn't mention promises made, he doesn't make any himself. He just tries to deal.

Castiel being tortured in Heaven. Because once Jimmy knew what happened, he doesn't need to ask again. He had seen it, looking into Cas's face while Cas was possessing his daughter; the angel was still bleeding when he took Jimmy back, and didn't stop before he was resurrected. Once Jimmy knew the truth, he didn't forgive. But he did find his own empathy, looking at this bright, beautiful thing ready to die to satisfy Jimmy's anger, as though his life meant so little. This was the first time he realized that Cas, at least, was broken. Later was when he got that the entire Host was. After getting the big picture, forgiveness came easy.

The fact that Gabriel died. They don't need to talk about it. Because Cas wasn't close to the archangel, but Gabriel's death hit him like a rogue asteroid anyway, and Jimmy could hear the _entire Host_ wail with him. They were in the middle of an out-of-body experience at the time, and Cas was barely hanging onto himself not to drift off like particles of grace on the wind, and even then he still heard it. This was so much deeper, so much worse, than Dean and Sam Winchester would ever understand. It was the loss of something so fundamentally part of creation, that there could be no measuring it. It was a further loss of innocence to an already mangled Host, a further breaking of what was already broken by God. Gabriel, whatever choices he made a few thousand years ago and since, was once their brightest voice, their joyful messenger; he was part of their history, one of the most loved parts, and there's no escaping that unscathed.

The very universe marked Gabriel's loss. Some things go beyond words, even when you know the words creation was founded upon.

The Host in that moment was one body, even their fallen, even Gabriel's murderer, in their grief. And the Host would never again, from that moment forward, exist as even a broken family.

 

This is what they do talk about, in no particular order:

Sam Winchester. He's an interesting topic of debate. They both like Sam. Cas was wary of the younger Winchester, but overcame it. Jimmy was annoyed, and also overcame it. They discuss Sam like one might discuss a celebrity who makes some poor decisions, but does a shocking amount of charity to make up for it. They discuss his choices, they discuss his so-called destiny, they discuss his self-esteem, they discuss his occasional control issues, they discuss every facet of culpability and free will, and all of it embodied in one (rather large) twenty-something unfairly tainted with demon blood.

History. Oh, God, history. Cas watched the Earth from the end of the war all the way until he went after Dean, and he is a fountain of knowledge; he's been around since before life even heaved itself from the oceans. Jimmy knows what happened the last morning in Pompeii, he knows what the Library of Alexandria looked like in detail, he knows what color a T-Rex was, he knows things that even scholars would probably never believe, just because they were too random and real to have happened, yet _did_.

Music. It is forever their touchstone. It’s a mutual comfort, it’s their way of teasing one another, it’s a language unto itself. Where Cas misses every pop culture reference Dean throws his way, he gets nearly every lyric that Jimmy does. And Jimmy can gauge how much Cas likes a song by how much background information he asks about it. Therefore, he knows what Cas’s favorite song of their impressive, if very generational, repertoire is.

Jimmy's family. Well, Jimmy talks. Cas falls deferentially silent, but Jimmy can feel his attentiveness. Jimmy talks because he misses them, he talks because he loves them, and he talks because he's _guilty as sin_. He talks to work through it, and he does it, too, because he's trying so hard to teach his angel an object lesson in love and forgiveness. He talks about it, he shares his memories, and Cas doesn't make the mistake of trying to absolve Jimmy more than once.

Castiel's family. Both of them talk about that. It's like pulling teeth, but they talk. Cas talks because he misses them, he talks because he loves them, he talks because he's _guilty as sin_. He talks, not to work through it, but because he is so lost that he has no idea how to deal with it; he talks because his blade has ended too many of them. He has no concept of forgiveness. He aches for it, so hard that it makes _Jimmy_ breathless, but has no idea how to attain it, or to be worthy of attaining it, except to perhaps pay penance by throwing his life away in some extraordinary manner, and suffering thoroughly beforehand. Jimmy, frankly, fears like all get out for his angel if they ever end up parted, because Cas will burn himself on that pyre into shadow-ash wings if he's left alone. There's no moderation. Which leads to:

Forgiveness. That it can't be taken without it being offered. That it really shouldn't even be asked for. That it is an individual thing. That you can love someone, but not necessarily forgive them. That you should try to fix your mistakes, but because you love, not because you're trying to gain forgiveness. That you don’t have to hurt yourself to buy it. Cas doesn't get that. He doesn't get it, because he is millions of years old and has never, in all that time, experienced it himself; he understands penance, punishment, but not true forgiveness. He tries, he tries so damn hard to wrap his mind around the concept, but he drowns trying. Love for Castiel, Angel of the Lord, is service and obedience, because obviously song and joy weren't enough or God wouldn't have gotten angry; love for Castiel, Angel of the Lord, is an uncertain, fearful thing that translates to suffering and ineffable plans beyond his scope and his mangled family and humanity and Dean and Sam and Jimmy, and by proxy Jimmy's family.

Jimmy is awed and heartsick to realize he is the first being to turn to Cas and say, "I love you, I forgive you." That in all creation, the angel has never known that he could be loved without being forgiven, and that he didn't have to suffer terribly before he was.

That he could receive one father's forgiveness, in the light of his own Father's abandonment.

 

This is what Jimmy Novak does with what he learned, and didn't want to learn:

He cuts away his angel's metaphorical armor against him and insinuates himself in the vulnerable space left behind, and he refuses to leave. Sometimes, he cuts Cas while he does it, and sometimes he regrets doing it, and sometimes it's necessary and he knows the scars left will be ones that might just save Cas later. The closer they end up sewn into the same skin, the easier it gets to not cut the angel, and only cut through the angel's bullshit. And the angel has a _lot_ of bullshit to cut through, too.

He coaxes Cas into singing. There aren't many things, he thinks, more beautiful than sitting in the Australian Outback, singing the Beatles, in their respective voices. He teases him with the silly songs, he comforts him with the serious ones, and he feels more than he has words for when either of them sing the last verse of The Boxer at one another. He sings Cas's name at him, three notes and six beats, just to hear Cas sing back _holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty_. Sometimes Cas doesn't sing it back; after he finds out God doesn't care, after Dean decides he'll say yes to Michael, after he beats Dean in the alley, the first time he's ever in his long life felt true, red-hot, rather _human_ rage. But eventually, Jimmy always gets him to sing again.

He teaches that love is still love, and when it hurts, it's because it needs healed, not because it's supposed to hurt. And that you don't need to hurt yourself in order to love. That love and pain can exist at the same time without it being a punishment, and that love is still love when that happens. And he knows that his lessons often stop applying once they reach the outside of their shared skull, when he can even manage to get them to apply inside of their skull, because God broke His childrens’ trust and never stuck around to rebuild it, but it's a start. His lessons are good enough, at least, to keep Cas alive all the way up to that final battle.

He learns to interpret what he sees on at least eight layers of reality and another four that he's not bad at, and while he defers to Cas, who knows so much more about war, and guerrilla warfare, and trying to stay ahead of those hunting you, he gains enough confidence to make suggestions. Castiel is creative for an angel, but Jimmy has the benefit of human ingenuity, and so they compliment each other far better than either might have thought possible in the beginning.

He accepts several things he needed to: That he hurt his family. That he was so gung-ho to give himself to some greater purpose that he didn't stop and really consider what it cost Amelia and Claire until it was too late. That he might never have the chance to make that right. That he has to live (and die) with that knowledge and do so with grace. That there might not be any right answer to it. That God is Flawed with a capital F, and that someday Jimmy might forgive Him, or might not. That the art of love and forgiveness gets no easier, for man or angel.

He accepts that he is not quite human anymore. That Cas is not quite angel anymore. That somewhere in there, they have left permanent marks on each other. He accepts that he thinks, now, more like a soldier than he ever would have wished for, and that for as much as he sometimes wishes he could wipe the warrior off of Cas and return him to the choir, it will never happen. That they are irrevocably changed; by each other, by what's happened outside, and by what may yet come to pass.

He goes into that last battle with the full understanding that he and Cas probably won't walk away, and that at least they'll go out together. He goes in with the determination that since there's no known afterlife for angels, screw it, he's gonna drag his angel with him into his own if that's the case, and he's sure he has the willpower to do it. He goes in and before he dies, he forgives Dean for being an emotionally constipated jerk, and the very angels they're trying to stop for the fact they're too broken to know better, and finally himself for leaving his family, because even knowing how much it hurt and even though he wouldn't dare ask their forgiveness, he has a hand in saving the angel who has a hand in saving the world.

The last thing he thinks is, "Did you seriously just--"

 

 

Jimmy Novak learned

that Heaven is beautiful, and he can see it in ways no other human likely could, with colors no human should be able to see, and layers that go into the angelic perspective. That it is a marvel, and a wonder, and the frail layer of memories have next to nothing on the beauty he can see of its realities.

that Heaven is _lonely_ , because he knows too much to live in the illusion, and that he can see the doorways and gates, and the thin cracks in the sky.

that he wasn't able to hang onto Cas.

 

 

Jimmy Novak wishes he had never learned

that there are literally no tears in Heaven.

Because oh, there should be.

When he hears the last thing he hears from Cas, there should be.


	3. III.

III.

**2011**

"You're the one who grips me tight and raises me from Perdition."

Castiel said that, or thought that, or felt that; all three would have the same result, which was the quiet snort of amusement next to him. He didn't open his eyes, but he knew if he did, he would see not only blue sky, but the solar system beyond it, and the galaxy beyond that; that he would see the solar winds and trailing edges of radiation, and the thumb prints of his Father, left so long ago.

Instead, he kept them closed and felt the simple sunlight on this layer of human skin, and the grass under his back, and the warm presence of Jimmy next to him, which he only now tentatively allowed himself to bask in. It could still turn. But if it did, it would be deserved.

Angels were never built to be alone.

"You save Dean, I save you," Jimmy commented, offhandedly. Castiel could feel him gesture, the minute stirring of nonexistent air in this headspace. More Jimmy's headspace; Castiel had no wish to spend any time in his own. And even though this was all his own broken mind clinging to the memory of the memory of his ghost, it was close enough. "Leaves my rear hanging in the wind, but I guess at least I get Heaven? But where were you, why didn't you find me?"

"I was going to. But you were free, and tired, and I didn't want to bother you with any of it anymore. You'd earned your rest."

"You idiot." Jimmy's voice was fond and heavy, all at once. Not dissimilar from Dean's lighter-hearted insults in word, but unfettered and unguardedly affectionate in tone.

"Yes," Castiel agreed, having left his pride when he found his voice again. He didn't want it back.

"You should have found me."

"It would have only put you in danger."

Jimmy poked his arm to drive it home, repeating, "You should have found me."

Angels were never built to be alone. But alone had many variations. He learned the first when he stood against his brothers and sisters. He learned so many more since then. What it was to be cut off from the Host entire; what it was to lose even the song, until all he had left was a lone human voice to sing to him and make it all bearable, his sole salvation.

Alone was God turning His back, alone was Dean about to say 'yes' and alone was oblivion. It was leading an army in an impossible fight, a burden that he still could feel the invisible weight from; it was manipulating those you love in a desperate bid to protect them. It was falling to his own pride, to the point of being unable to see past it. It was brutalizing creatures for information. 

It was the shadow ash of Rachel's and Balthazar's wings, burned by his own hand.

So many flavors of alone. Once he had learned the first, he'd lived in some form of it ever since.

"I should have found you," Castiel finally agreed, folding his hands on his chest in borrowed gesture, borrowed skin.

Loneliness was one voice of the choir singing a different song; loneliness was learning to sing a duet, and then being returned to the solo part. Loneliness was singing his sorrow to a creation that didn't care, a Father that didn't hear, and realizing in coalescing thought, _"This is what Dean feels like right now, this empty place in his head and his heart,"_ and _"Sam, I have to get Sam."_

"I feel better now, I think," he said. It was true, insofar as he wasn't losing time anymore, and it was true insofar as he didn't immediately want to rip out of Jimmy's skin and scatter himself to the corners of the universe in the hopes that his Father, or whoever was behind his latest resurrections, wouldn't be able to put him back together. Oblivion was still an option. But a harder one to contemplate, in a garden, with Jimmy Novak there even in delusional form to provide-- something. A counter balance. A steadiness.

It was good that one of them was steady. He was becoming increasingly less so, but even so.

"Good. You were breaking my heart," Jimmy said. It was frank, and honest. Not sarcasm, not even the kind they put invisible quotes around.

Angels were never built to be alone; such was Castiel's well-deserved punishment, and he wasn't sure if it wasn't a new cowardice to allow his own broken mind to alleviate it like this. But he did know that his Father had devised the perfect torment for Lucifer originally; while he had no sympathy for the devil, especially not after Sam, he had to admire the elegant sadism in it.

(He had no sympathy for himself, either, and didn't want it.)

"I am the monster, this time." It wasn't anywhere near the first time he'd stated it, simple and factual. A reminder to himself, to not be the monster again. It was a compulsive thing, but he had given up somewhat on controlling the compulsions; it was getting steadily harder to focus, and taking more concentration to keep himself from accidentally harming anyone out there, where on at least some level, he was aware of being surrounded by vulnerable, frightened and damaged humans. Speaking his mind even compulsively was a small trade.

He wasn't looking for reassurance, but Jimmy denied it, as he always did. "No. You just made some really stupid choices. And you've got more choices to make, and you're gonna screw up some of them, too. And you're laying there talking to a guy who also made some really stupid choices, who you don't even believe is real."

"The universe can't really afford any more of my 'stupid choices'," Castiel answered, lifting his hands to quote it, a gesture he found amusing even now.

Jimmy swatted one of his hands. "I should have never taught you that. And get over yourself."

"You sound like Dean."

"Me? _I_ sound like Dean? Which of us is trying to elevate ourselves to Armageddon, here, you or me?" Jimmy's voice almost squeaked by the end of his question, incredulous.

He had a point, but Castiel didn't want to acknowledge it. And so he didn't. He also knew he was painfully transparent in the avoidance, and he also knew that he wasn't going to acknowledge that, either, so finally he just refolded his hands and looked up at Jimmy sitting next to him and felt the sharp double-edge of love and pain, tangled together in the face of one man. 

Sometimes, he thought that this was also a particularly elegant punishment, this time of his own creation. "You're still a sword, Jimmy Novak. I had never suspected that one day I'd find it turned on me."

There was nothing meant to be offensive about that statement, because it was a truth, and it was a cherished truth. And Jimmy knew it, which was why he looked down with one eyebrow up, then grinned a half-grin. "Sometimes, I'm your shield, too."

 

 

Just like there were shades and flavors of _alone_ , there were shades of love and pain, and he sometimes could marvel at the intricacy of it all even while he was bleeding from it. Somewhere, Dean Winchester was driving around trying to clean up Castiel's often-fatal errors in judgment, with Sam next to him, and that was love and pain. Somewhere, Amelia and Claire Novak were still painstakingly carrying on their lives; he knew as recently as just before opening Purgatory that they were safe and unharmed, and lived lives of relative physical ease (because he made it so), but the one thing he couldn't do was give them back Jimmy and that, too, was love and pain.

He wondered what it would feel like to wrap his wings around them in angelic grace and to cry human tears, and share this grief. He had grown enough to understand that it would probably be more cruel than kind.

Longing was unangelic, but like loneliness and love and pain, it had flavors and shades. He longed to see Dean smile at him. Even in mockery, at this point, he wouldn't be picky. He longed to see Sam whole and healthy, not broken and worn like he last had. He longed for Jimmy to be real, back when things were both more complex and more simple.

Here, he asked for no forgiveness for his latest transgressions. Jimmy had yet to offer any. He didn't understand how to forgive himself; the concept was foreign and distasteful and frightening.

But from Dean, he had learned how desperately a living thing could yearn for forgiveness. And from Jimmy, he had learned that someone could withhold it and still love you. That had been a particularly hard lesson, and it was exclusive between the two of them, but maybe that was why it was Jimmy now who sat and sang to him. A lesson he had learned, from Jimmy, maybe because only Jimmy could ever teach it.

_I love you, I forgive you,_ was seven beats, but to be blasphemous, he thought it might be an even more beautiful song than the song itself, and he would wait for it, if he could.

"You're singing in the wrong register," he interrupted, because he knew that it would get him chastised.

Sure enough, Jimmy stopped singing Simon & Garfunkel and gave his head a push, answering without bite, "Says the angel currently wrecking my ex-vocal cords instead of using his own voice. Quiet in the peanut gallery, unless you're going to sing with me."

He gave into their call and response, now, and it hurt every single time. A lancing, bright thing made of longing and love and pain. But had yet to sing anything else, even though he knew every song Jimmy knew, and used to harmonize with his own voice to Jimmy's human voice; sometimes in the space between their ears, sometimes in some place where there was no one else to overhear and feel pain from it.

They were in a garden, and under Jimmy's rendition of Mrs. Robinson the bees hummed, and over the birds chirped, and as mental breakdowns went, Castiel couldn't quite figure out what mercy was involved to give him such a beautiful one.

"Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon; goin' to the candidate's debate. Laugh about it, shout about it, when you've got to choose: Every way you look at this, you lose."

"I know why you're singing this song," Castiel said, interrupting again. "I think I even understand the metaphor, but my name is not Mrs. Robinson." Though otherwise, the song was quite apt.

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you," Jimmy looked him in the eye and sang back, undeterred.

 

 

They were unfailingly honest with one another and had been since he had knelt before this man and offered his life in exchange for his crimes. It was the most honest relationship he'd ever had. They knew each other as only two people who walked the same thoughts could; their quiet joys, their secret fears, their longings and their regrets.

He didn't want to lose it again, delusion or not.

"I like the bees," he said, thoughtfully. "They're very orderly; they do good, and harm no one."

"Except when they sting?" Jimmy asked, this time leaning against his shoulder, both of them sitting on a stone bench watching the bees go from flower to flower.

"Even then, they mean no harm." Castiel gestured, a quick and light motion, and the tracks of the bees lit up in threads of gold; like Fate, like art. Pulled from perfect memory, this time his own, they were second only to reality by the thinnest of margins. "By comparison, we must seem like lumbering beasts. Destructive and purposeless. Even angels."

"Planning on transmuting into a bee, when you leave?"

Castiel dropped his hands back to his lap, restlessly rubbed them against one another, thumb across thumb, trying to find meaning in the rasp of skin. "I don't want to leave here."

Jimmy leaned forward a little to study his (own) face, eyes narrowed a little. An angel whose hands twitched in human anxiety; a human studying him with angelic intensity. "You can't stay here forever, Cas. You have to wake up someday."

"Maybe. Not today."

Jimmy watched a moment longer, then apparently saw whatever it was he was seeking and nodded, gentle acquiescence, sitting back and pressing their shoulders together again. Both of them knew full well that it was the first nudge back towards reality, and that it wasn't going to go away, but that was something that Castiel didn't want to acknowledge and so he didn't, and he was still transparent, but he refused to acknowledge that, as well, and then Jimmy swayed against him, just once, and sang To Everything There Is a Season by the Byrds, so that they could both breathe.

 

 

"She feels it close now, the appointed season: The invisible thread is broken as she flies," he tried to explain, some time later, "Suddenly, without warning, without reason, the guiding spark of instinct winks and dies."

"Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird," Jimmy answered, shaking his head, "Bird and wing together go down, one feather."

"Try as she will, the trackless world delivers no way, the wilderness of light no sign," he persisted, urgently, "The immense and complex map of hills and rivers mocks her small wisdom with its vast design."

And Jimmy stopped him before the last stanza; stilled his hands and held them still, stopping their broken flutter:

"No thing that ever flew, not the lark, not you," he said, not looking away, "can die as others do."

 

 

“I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told…”

“Not that one,” he said, grinding his head against Jimmy’s shoulder, which did absolutely nothing to help the awful ache that burned in his heart at the memory. “Not that one.”

Jimmy just took a breath and nodded, and sang the Beatles instead.

 

 

"I want you to tell them, Cas."

He didn't need to ask what Jimmy meant, because he knew. He also didn't need to breathe, but he felt like he couldn't. Not today. Not today not today not today.

"Not today," Jimmy echoed the unspoken thought, and it was an awful, selfish relief that he sounded just as heartsick about it. "Not today. Someday. Not today, but someday."

They were so unfailingly, faithfully honest. The most honest thing he had ever known.

"My sword, my shield; I wear your scars all over me," Castiel answered, finally, in a rush. "I see my Father's fingerprints, and Dean's handprints, and where you cut me and where you healed me, every time I look at myself; they endure, Jimmy, they endure past Leviathan and Purgatory monsters and maybe even past the ash stains from Hell, I don't know, but they endure. I don't want to leave here; please don't make me leave you, I can't."

Jimmy studied him until he looked anywhere else; pointlessly, because he could still feel it. Jimmy gave him no quarter; only compassion and mercy when he didn't deserve it, and this was love too.

"You'll die here," Jimmy said, at length, reaching up like he did when they found one another's song again, drawing their foreheads together. "You'll die here, if you stay. Not yet, maybe not for a long time, but you will."

"Does it _matter_? Does it matter? I have betrayed my family, and my friends, I have committed sins I can never hope to wash clean, I have-- and I would destroy whatever I touched; Dean or Amelia or Claire, I nearly destroyed Sam, and Sam had already suffered too much, I decimated Heaven with a snap of my fingers, murdered those I loved, Jimmy, I'm a _monster_ and--"

"Castiel, Castiel," Jimmy sang, soft, but clear enough to cut the air.

And Castiel jerked faintly, and murmured back, "Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy," a echo of his own mourning song; wrapped his wings around and over them, an angel's grace in lieu of a human's tears. "I'm so tired. I don't want to fight anymore."

Jimmy said nothing, just waiting for the inevitable.

And Castiel shivered, stilled; measured breaths and heartbeats, and he pulled his wings tighter around them and pressed his forehead tighter to Jimmy's. He railed against it, and he mourned it.

But it was the truth.

They were unfailingly, faithfully honest with each other. And so, through his teeth, he said, "Yes. I'll tell them. I promise."

This was what it meant. This was what it meant. This was what it meant, to hurt so much that you could die of it, and to choose to live instead; this was what it meant, this was what it meant, to want to scream so loud that creation would unravel before you; this was what it meant, and this, too, was love.

"I know." Jimmy rubbed his thumb in his (own) hair, soothing and grieving. "I'm sorry, Cas. I know."

 

 

"I think I'll see where they go," he finally said, after days where he said nothing and just listened to Jimmy sing or breathe or be. A resignation. A resolution. "The bees, I mean."

"Yeah?" Jimmy asked, glancing over, before looking back to where they buzzed from flower to flower. "Sounds peaceful."

"It does, doesn't it?" Castiel rubbed his hand across his eyes, muscle memory from the man who wore the same face, the one sitting beside him patiently waiting. Oddly, hyper aware of the hospital bracelet on his wrist, which had followed him even here. "I'm sorry, Jimmy. I'll tell them; they deserve to know that you had no place nor part in what I caused."

"It's okay," Jimmy said, looking down at his own hands for a moment, before dropping them and moving over so they could lean on one another again. "I mean, yeah, they need to know. But don't apologize to me. I know they aren't going to be happy seeing you still wearing my face and wrecking my ex-vocal cords, but at least they can move on, you know? If they know I'm gone."

He did know; he had always known, but he didn't know if he'd hurt them worse by going to them. The prospect terrified him. Everything right now seemed to. Including himself. Especially himself. Everything but bees, and Jimmy, and this quiet safety. "I wish there was more I could do. Give you back to them. I would-- I would--"

"Don't, okay? Don't wish you could erase it. Just give them the truth, Cas. I can't give you their forgiveness, and maybe they'll never give it themselves. But you can give them their truth." Jimmy smiled, a rueful, warm little smile, glancing over again. "And I wouldn't. Maybe once, years ago, I would have. But I wouldn't." He raised his hands again, looking down at them. "I wear your scars, too. And maybe there's no right answer. Would the world be here if I said 'no'? Would you? Would they? I can't give myself their forgiveness, either. But we can give them the truth."

Castiel nodded. Breathed. Waited until he could do so without a tremble, and then asked, "What else would you want me to tell them?"

Jimmy thought about it, carefully. Weighing, in his human way, what would be more love or more pain. But finally, he settled on, "Nothing. Just the truth. That goes for us both."

"Every way you look at this, you lose," Castiel quoted, with a huff of a sad chuckle.

 

 

"Angels weren't built to be alone," he said, "and I was alone, and I never actually truly thanked you, for being my salvation. The one voice I had left. You gripped me tight and raised me from Perdition." Castiel felt, instead of saw, Jimmy take a breath to answer and patted his chest to stall it. "No, Jimmy, let me talk. I don't know how well I'll be able to, out there, to anyone else. I'll do my best for Amelia and Claire, but I don't know how well I'll be able to talk, and I don't think you'll be there. I've been working on this for days, and keep getting maddeningly distracted, so let me talk."

There was no sound of the Host, no sound at all, except that of bees across the garden, and that of Jimmy's heartbeat and lungs under his ear, buried in the chest where he'd rested his head. It was all Castiel listened to, shutting out everything else ruthlessly, just to focus on it. He felt, didn't see, Jimmy pick his head up from his own arm to look down at him, and in a single moment he knew what it was to be in two times at once; on the edge of the end of the world, riding in the back seat of the Impala, the only time he ever faced oblivion peacefully, because in their headspace they were curled up like this, and Jimmy sang to him to keep away the terrors that lurked beyond the darkness. Then. And now.

He knew he was babbling, and not entirely putting words together in the right order or with any expediency, but this mattered.

"I never thanked you, not like I should have. If I had known then what I know now, I would have. I would have told you everything. I wish you were real; that I was saying this to you out there, in reality. My sword, my shield; I never guessed you'd turn and cut me. Do you know how many times my courage faltered and you, and only you, not even Dean managed to keep me from dying under the weight of it all? I have known so many shades of love, but none for forgiveness, and you gave me that, too; only you, only you could show me that. My heart. I hear it beat, and I never forget you gave it to me, Jimmy, I listen for you there. I should have listened harder, I know that now, but I won't forget again.

"Do you remember what you asked, before they pulled me back to Heaven? You asked if I knew how to sing. And I told you I remembered how. And you asked me to sing, and I did. And you asked me then later when the last time I had sang was, and I told you it was before I was made a soldier. I don't even know why. It seemed impossible after. I listened, but I never sang. Until you. Jimmy Novak. Until I lost you. And now, here you are again. You keep giving me back my voice."

Silence fell, ticked off by breaths and heartbeats, and then Jimmy gave a little laugh, emotional. "Wow, did I. Wait, am I supposed to be quiet still?"

"No. No, I just wanted to get that out. You can talk now," Castiel said, with gravity, knowing full well the reaction it would get and not able to smother his own little grin, eyes still closed.

Jimmy snorted in amusement. "Good to know." And then he didn't say anything else, which prompted Castiel to look up at him. Then he asked, grinning back, "What?"

"It took me days to find all those words." There was no bite, though, to his lament. A joking huff. But no bite.

"I know."

"And?"

"Castiel, Castiel." Jimmy took the arm from behind his head and pressed two fingertips gently to Castiel's forehead, resting them there for a moment, warm and kind and affectionate. Healing. "I love you. I forgive you."

Just like that. Love and pain, in six beats. Hope, in seven beats. Just enough hope. Just enough strength, to do what he knew he would have to do.

Shortly, he thought he would wake up, and face the world, and face informing Amelia and Claire that Jimmy was gone. Shortly, he would go back to the shade of alone that is the world without Jimmy himself. Shortly, he would have to try to piece back together something of himself, enough to function. Shortly, he would try to live a life where he harmed no one. Shortly.

He closed his eyes again, and listened for a moment to the heartbeat under his ear, echoed in his own chest. Then asked, with a little smile, "Will you sing for me? I'll sing with you."

"There you are, Joltin' Joe." Jimmy put his arm back behind his head, and thought for a moment, and then picked one of their more gentle ones from years before, starting, "Love is but a song we sing, fear's the way we die; you can make the mountains ring, or make the angels cry; though the bird is on the wing, and you may not know why..."

And so they sang, human voice and angelic chords,

_"C'mon, people, now, smile on your brother; everybody get together, try to love one another right now."_


	4. IV.

**IV.**

**2009**

There were two ways to deal with being -- basically -- imprisoned in his own body. Jimmy usually took option A early on, because he didn't exactly get a full disclosure from the angel who went and hijacked his body and didn't know there actually were other options. Option A was-- nothing. Unconsciousness. A pleasant one, most of the time, but when it wasn't, it really wasn't. And for all of his amazing power and overwhelming presence, Castiel wasn't exactly perfect at keeping it that way.

Which meant that it was usually really _bad_ when Jimmy did stir up, because it was nearly always under some kind of duress. And somehow, he'd landed the angel who got his ass kicked often and hard enough that there was plenty of duress. Then there were whole months of time passing without him really noticing, which was its own special brand of Hell. And finally, there was being left behind in a trashed warehouse with absolutely _no idea_ what had been going on, and the sheer amount of bad that came out of that which might have been avoided had he known more.

So, Jimmy decided that while option A was viable in short amounts, it wouldn't do if they were going to make a go of this saving the world business.

But Jimmy wasn't sure, yet, how he felt about option B.

It was definitely better than just being around for the bad stuff. But it also meant that he was pretty much just a passenger in his own skin, without any real sensation from said skin, watching someone else turn his head and look at things. Like watching a handy cam movie. Blair Witch Project style, sometimes.

It wasn't helped by the fact that he was saddled with (literally) the quietest angel in existence. His attempts at conversations didn't exactly get much back. But he was starting to get that it wasn't because Cas didn't _want_ to hear Jimmy's voice echoing in there. Multitasking wasn't any kind of problem for an angel, Jimmy figured out, so it wasn't even distracting. More that he was baffled and uncertain about what to say or do.

Which made two of them, but one of them was an ad salesman for AM radio. If you can make a living doing that and pay the mortgage? You could talk blood from a stone.

_So, we're looking for God--_

_Yes._

_\--don't interrupt me, okay? I know you can anticipate what I'm going to ask, but please don't._

Jimmy kind of marvelled that Cas shut up. Immediately. He could feel the vague-- he wasn't sure. Apology? Was that the word? Cas had control of their body, but when Jimmy gave an order these days, he tended to listen. It was something Jimmy used quite judiciously and mildly, because he wasn't exactly a soldier and it was a little unnerving that he could shut an Angel of the Lord down with the right tone, but he was glad for the ability nonetheless.

It had been too long in coming for him not to appreciate it now, even if he was careful in how he used it.

_So, we're looking for God and the way we're going to do that is to talk to a Greek goddess? They actually exist?_

_They do. We're going to summon Adrasteia -- Nemesis -- who is sister to the Fates, daughter of Nyx. She is the embodiment of retribution; I don't hold out much hope for her to actually know where my Father is, but she might have a direction for me-- for us._

Jimmy chewed over it for a moment on his side of the metaphorical aisle. When you're just a passenger in your own body, you had a whole lot of time to think about things. He'd had to come to some pretty damning and painful conclusions about the Host of Heaven, and throw out a whole lot of Presbyterian biblical teachings, and his faith in a lot of things had been battered. But accepting that the Greek pantheon actually existed?

Then again, if anyone would have asked him a couple years ago, right before he first heard Castiel's voice, he would have probably answered that angels were largely metaphorical and that while he was faithful and devout, he wasn't exactly a mouth-breather conservative Southern Baptist type waiting for literal hellfire and brimstone. Now he believed in literal angels and literal hellfire. Gods and goddesses weren't that big a stretch, then.

_So, I have to ask: How exactly does an angel know a pagan goddess?_

There was a long moment where he could almost feel his body pause, and he could feel the angel within it pause as well. Which was kind of nice, to be able to garner that kind of attention. He was still pretty damn bitter about how it had been before, and both of them knew it; he wasn't constantly bitter, though, and both of them knew that, too.

_It was during the first war; Lucifer had been defeated, but with all of the wickedness he had unleashed, there was a great deal of skirmishing. I was attached to a battalion as a messenger, at that point -- as so many of our foes were our own fallen, we had no real way to speak to each other as we always do, lest we be overheard -- and I was bringing orders back to Zachariah. I was nearly back to the field of battle when one of the fallen caught me in mid-flight. We tangled and fell to Earth, and he managed to wound me. I expected, at that point, to either be taken captive or killed. Adrasteia came to my rescue_.

The tone was even as always, but there was a note of-- ancient fondness, was the nearest description. Of old wars, and old scars, and old friends. There were times when Cas sounded more or less _new_ to the universe. And then there were times like this, where Castiel, soldier of God, was an infinite well of war stories and history. Jimmy was still learning how to figure out what all of that actually meant.

_Why do you think she did it?_

_She said that it was in her own best interest that my message get through. I hesitate to ascribe any further altruism to it than that. Even so, she did save me. I'm hoping she remembers me well enough to help me now._

Jimmy would have nodded, had he control of his own head. Maybe the feeling was enough. _So, wait. God created angels, humans and then minor gods and goddesses? Really?_

Cas's ringing voice was soft, and a little amused. Which might have been offensive, but there was a certain warmth that went with it that took the sting off. _No. You -- mankind -- created your own gods and goddesses. Dean and Sam often call them thought-forms, though they took on a life of their own. The various minor -- forgive me, minor is probably not the term I want. The others, the ones often thought to be mythology, are the product of humanity's need for them, in a time when they needed them. In all of their good, and in all of their bad_.

_And why is that not the term?_ Jimmy asked, curious about the self-correction.

There was a moment where it felt almost like discomfort. But Cas answered, carefully, _Because they came from you. In all of their stories, you can see humanity's finest traits; its defiance and its courage. But also its pettiness and cruelty. Their gods and goddesses are a reflection of themselves, and they, in turn, are a reflection of my Father. It seems-- disrespectful, to discount them as my brethren do. My Father gave humanity the ability to create life. Humanity did far more with it than biological procreation_.

Jimmy chewed on that, mostly to himself. And then he gave something of a mental shrug. _Guess we better start summoning a goddess, then? Tell me how we're doing it_.

And, to his credit, Cas did.

 

 

Adrasteia was winged.

Jimmy wasn't sure why it surprised him. But she looked like what he actually had expected angels to look like before he met one.

First he had to overcome vertigo, though, to appreciate it. Cas, somewhat reluctantly, let him look through his own perception, and when that nearly drove Jimmy to screaming, toned it back. Said something about too many layers for comprehension, and when Jimmy next was able to look again, he still felt some vertigo, but it was manageable.

It was like looking through not two different kinds of prescription glasses lenses, but more like looking through ten or so. His mind didn't know how to handle it, so it kept slipping between layers.

Finally, Cas reached out and said, _Here_ , and Jimmy felt it almost like a metaphysical touch to the forehead. Then, his vision settled into something less mind-breaking.

Adrasteia was winged. She appeared before the bowl and the candle, great wings curled forward as if to slow her descent, and she looked very human and very inhuman, all at once. Long, dark hair; darker skin. A pair of loose sleep pants, a sleeveless t-shirt. Casual clothes, for a goddess, but her bearing spoke of someone who had once been worshiped and knew she deserved to be.

And settling now folded at her back, those wings, white but for the glow of them. Jimmy wasn't sure how he could even see it, that glow, and instinctively he recognized it as _not angelic_ but also, at the exact same time as _powerful and incomprehensible_. A glance down at the bowl, and he could see the magic around it, too; the colors of it, winding up to the sky, weaving in gossamer patterns in red and orange, like a signal fire.

He thought, if he tilted his head (if he could tilt his head), he would see at her side a sword or a branch, or something else.

"Castiel," she said, and her voice only had one layer that Jimmy could hear. Like a human.

To Jimmy's surprise, Cas bowed, low and eyes down. In their peripheral vision, Jimmy could see the tips of his primaries spread out on either side in supplication; the blackened stains left from Hell, the brilliant silverlight edge on them. "Adrasteia," he answered, in that somewhat wrecked version of Jimmy's voice. He stood straight again, and Jimmy could hear the rush and rustle as he settled his wings back to rest again. "Thank you for seeing me."

"It's been a long time," she answered, looking him over and settling on some point at his shoulder. "You've healed well, but for the scar."

"I have."

She turned her pale gray-eyed gaze back to study his face -- Jimmy could see the power behind it, too, but the color was striking, like winter, like _retribution,_ Cas supplied silently -- and then smirked. "Why have you called me? My willingness to consider your kind, angel, ended long ago."

"I wanted to ask for your help," Cas answered, and at a nudge from Jimmy, held his hands out, fingers spread. Awkward, but appeasing. "I realize that many of my kind haven't treated you and yours with due accord, but I've never been among them."

"I saved you once," she said mildly. "In turn, once your war was won, you and all of those like you sought to wipe our influence from the map."

"I had no say in that. It was man who wrought you, and it's now man who forgets you." Despite the words -- and internally, the words made Jimmy both cringe at the tactlessness and be impressed for the moxie of it -- Cas's tone was decent enough. Jimmy could hear the echoing buzz in their head, and some of the _otherness_ of an angel in it, but there wasn't anything mean or particularly arrogant there. "Adrasteia. Daughter of Nyx. Lucifer walks free, and he will tear this world apart. If that means anything to you, please, help me."

"He is _your_ brother, Castiel, you deal with him," she answered, chin tipping up. "You and your Heavenly Host."

The frustration that bled through was surprisingly human. Jimmy resisted the urge to poke it with a stick and say _see how the rest of us feel?_ Well. He resisted for about two seconds, and then he did just that.

_And what would you have me do?_ Cas shot back, though without much heat.

_Hear her out. Let her vent. Tell her the truth._ All simple stuff, Jimmy thought. Not always, when dealing with angels who were allergic to being straight-forward.

Cas took a breath and spoke aloud, "The Host is partly behind this. Behind Lucifer's being let free. Demons conspired to it, but angels helped it along. I've left, I'm cut off from Heaven, and I'm trying to make my own way to stopping it. I have few allies, Adrasteia."

"And you think I'm one of them?" she asked, and then there was a sword, which she was leaning on, shimmering like it had been dipped in moonlight and shadow. "Where were you? Where were any of you, but floating and watching from afar, while my family's followers were slaughtered or converted? Where were you, when horrors were perpetuated in _your Father's_ name? And now, you're asking for my help? My sisters may have integrated themselves into your hierarchy long since, but I never did, and I don't mean to start."

"It's no longer my hierarchy," he answered, cautiously. "I've rebelled. I'm being hunted as we speak. I'm trying to save this world, and my only means to do so is to find my Father and plead with Him to intervene."

It was the wrong thing to say, at least quite in those words, and both of them knew it at the same time. Adrasteia's expression hardened, and she stood straight, wings flaring slightly; in an instant, she was simultaneously a young woman in her PJs, and also a goddess, humanity's need for fairness and justice given form, glowing in silvers and blues not angelic but still somehow powerful. "You're asking me -- _me_ \-- to help you find _your_ God. After all I just said to you, you're asking me to help you find Him. You're a fool, Castiel, on a fool's mission. Even if I could tell you where He was -- and no one can -- it would not bring back the dead, and it would not change anything for me or mine."

Jimmy could feel the heat of indignation and divine self-righteousness, and for a split second, he could swear he felt Cas pull his wings up, ready to defend or attack. _Don't. Just-- don't try to pull divine wrath on her._

He didn't know how much he was being listened to, but after a moment, Cas said, still carefully, "It's your world, too. If he destroys it, what place would you have in what's left of it?"

Adrasteia laughed, a somewhat bitter sound. "What place do I have in it now? You're right -- we're being forgotten, aside what they teach in books, aside those few who choose to speak to us using magic long since out of context. We're both far from home, if what you say is true." She stepped forward and Jimmy could feel Cas tense, both out there and internally. She made no move, though, to raise her sword and just looked up at him with keen, pale, winter-retribution eyes. "We are far from home. I will never be able to return to mine, and you may never be able to return to yours. Let me ask you, Angel of the Lord, what happens when you're as forgotten as we are? When there's no one left who has faith in you? What happens to you then?"

There was a long beat, where Jimmy felt the reverberation of the question, and then Cas answered, "I don't know."

Adrasteia raised an eyebrow. "When you have an answer, then come to me. Tell me." She reached out, casually as an afterthought, and touched the old scar marring Cas's wing. Jimmy felt him jolt internally, something like anxiety, but outwardly they were as still as marble. "I have a sad sympathy for broken, winged things. Come and tell me, and then I will call myself your ally."

And with that, not even with a farewell, she stepped back and spread her wings, and in one great beat of them was gone.

 

 

_I always wanted to take Ames to Europe,_ Jimmy said, looking out over the Euboean Strait, though Cas was the one controlling their head, making it a very fixed view. It had been, he guessed, about a half an hour or so since Adrasteia had left; the candle was extinguished, the clay bowl and apples being left behind as relatively unimportant, and the last traces of the magic of it had faded away like smoke.

He could feel Cas brooding, though he couldn't read the thoughts. Even so, he could guess the flavor of them, and some part of him was amazed at how jarred he was by her questions himself. After a little while, Jimmy had figured to break the silence. He was still a little surprised, though, when Cas asked, quietly, _Why didn't you?_

_Money. As in, not enough of it. We were really young. We weren't even married yet when Claire was conceived, by about three weeks_. Jimmy couldn't grin, but he felt like it. It seemed kind of pointless to talk to a being who could easily read his mind and memories, but he did anyway. _I mean, a trip to Europe is something you have to save up for, and I was still working retail, of all things. I was just scraping by with rent and paying the bills, and then Claire became a reality and babies aren't cheap. Her Dad had to help us pay the hospital bills and we just about lived at the Goodwill._

He got the distinct impression that Cas didn't understand any of that, but he could feel the angel's attention on him. After the brooding before, Jimmy wasn't sure if he was helping, but he was sure he wasn't hurting, and that was something.

_And then, after we had Claire, we settled on in-country vacations. You know, Florida. South Carolina. Someday, we were going to go to California, and just go all the way up the coast to Canada._ Jimmy wished he could sigh. _What's it smell like, here?_

There was a beat, then Cas asked, bemused, _Smell like?_

_Yeah. What's it smell like? I figure that if I'm going to visit Europe, if I ever get to tell anyone anything about it, it probably won't be that I got to meet a goddess while possessed by an angel. So, give me something I can share,_ Jimmy said, something of a good-natured nudge. He wasn't entirely sure why, exactly, he felt either good-natured or like nudging, but he didn't examine the impulse too hard. It seemed the right thing to do.

There was a long moment, almost tense, and then just like that Jimmy could feel the breeze coming off of the sea, and smell the ocean, and hear the grass underfoot. He dragged a deep, shuddering breath into lungs that felt like they hadn't properly expanded in far too long, and for a long moment he was so caught up in the sensations that he didn't realize that he was sitting his own body down, like a normal human being, and holding his own hand over his own racing heart. "Holy--"

_What does it smell like?_ Cas asked, sounding strained, still in his head.

Jimmy took a few more deep breaths, borderline sobs, before he could answer, "The ocean, mostly. Wow." He turned his head, looking over the horizon, over the lights across the water, to the sky above. He could still sense a faint-- something about the world that was different, but mostly he could just see. Could turn his head. Could take in the fact that he was in _Greece_ , a whole world away from where he had been just a few hours before. "Wow," he repeated, softer, not really caring if he sounded like an idiot.

_We can't stay long._

Jimmy brushed his hand across the grass, and realized after a moment that the edge of anxiety he was feeling wasn't his. "Are you okay?"

_Yes. It's--_ There was a pause, and Jimmy could all but feel Cas twitch. _Unnerving?_

"Being out of the driver's seat?" Jimmy thought about it for a moment, even as he stood up and headed back to the bowl to grab the pieces of apple left sliced in it. In the faint light, the slices were already browning, but beggars couldn't be choosers. "Why? You could take back control at any point."

_I don't know,_ was the eventual answer.

Jimmy nodded, as he pretty much devoured the apple, still just taking in the sights around him. The burst of flavor sent a shiver down his spine, and he had to fight not to moan in some kind of unsettling manner, just for that simple thing. The air was warm, and humid, and he resisted the urge to take the overcoat off. "Where are we going next?" he asked, partly to hear his own voice in a non-wrecked form, partly to distract the increasingly restless angel in his skin.

_I'm not sure. Dean's amulet has done little to guide me in the right direction. Mesopotamia, perhaps, as it once was called._

"Seems as good a place to look as any." Jimmy popped the last bite of apple into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, and with some reluctance, held his hands out. "All right, all yours. Let me fly with you this time?"

If Cas was startled by the easy acceptance, he didn't show it. But even so, his tone was warm and grateful as he answered, sliding back into control and flexing their hands, _As you wish._

Jimmy would have nodded if he could have. Good enough, for now.


	5. V.

**V.**

**2011**

"Something's happening," Castiel said, head tipped. Listening for whatever it was that pinged on him from reality. Around them, their garden slid briefly sideways before righting itself again. But whatever feeling it was that caused it remained; a tense anticipation, like the first roll of thunder.

Ominous. Heavy.

Jimmy blinked and pulled himself to his feet, tipping his own head, frowning. "What is it?"

"I don't know; it's-- a storm? I think." The garden slid again. "Jimmy--"

This was it. The parting of ways.

Jimmy grabbed the angel by his shoulders and then pressed one hand to his (own) chest, over his heart. Intent and focused. "Listen to me: Stay alive, Cas. Don't forget that, when you wake up. Chase the bees, sing, spread your wings. But _stay alive_ , okay?"

"I'll do my best," Castiel answered, and when the garden started going out of focus, colors flickering to monochrome, he covered Jimmy's hand with his own, eyes wide and worried as he looked around, before levelling back on Jimmy. "For you, I'll do my best; for them."

"Your sword and your shield; I'll find you again.” Jimmy quirked a sad half-smile, pressing his hand briefly harder. “I love you. I’ll see you soon."

The angel closed his eyes hard, and his answer was so achingly wistful that it silenced everything for a moment. "I wish you could."

For one more moment they managed to hold onto one another, and then in a bolt of lightning, it was over.

 

 

In Indiana, Castiel opened his eyes and sat up, jolted through his being by something ancient and powerful into the waking world.

 

 

In Heaven, Jimmy Novak looked at his hand, held up in empty air, then at the cracks in the walls under the thin veneer of his own memories, and the glowing scripts and sigils he'd drawn there. Looked at the empty space where just a moment ago, he still had that hand pressed against Cas's chest, after spending God knew how long talking him out of that nightmare of suicidal guilt and grief. After inventing and then exploiting the most unorthodox usage of a connection between an angel and a vessel ever tried.

Clinging to the first time they'd been able to hear each other and sing to each other since he died.

He closed his fist, and pressed it to his own forehead, and tried not to scream.

And cursed, yet again, that there were no tears in Heaven.

 

 

 

By the time he made it to the Roadhouse, Ash was already in the middle of analyzing what data he could gather about whatever was going on that had the angels in an uproar. If he concentrated, Jimmy could hear a buzz of them; nothing like he could when he was still with Cas, but enough to recognize something big was going on. Luckily, Ash was smart enough to figure out how to intercept the constant stream of chatter that one of the Winchesters -- Jimmy didn't remember which, he thought Dean -- had dubbed Angel Radio.

He came through the door under his own sigil and stopped just inside. "Tell me that whatever it was, it didn't happen on a Thursday."

Part of him wanted to just sit and wallow in his own lonely space. Ache for that severed connection. He hadn't held out a whole lot of hope he'd be able to contact Cas at all, but apparently, while Cas was shut-down to reality, he was reachable. Jimmy had been trying for awhile; it beat reliving memories he couldn't pretend were real, or cataloging regrets he wasn't allowed to cry for.

And thank God -- actually, no, thank Ash and the fact that Jimmy was the vessel of a tactician and picked up some tricks -- that he finally did, even if the state he found Cas in was enough to scare him half to death. Or, whatever it was when you were already dead but felt like you could still die all over again.

"Still working it out, Jimbo!" Ash looked up from his laptop, then narrowed his eyes. "Where've you been, kemosabe? We missed you. You're our main man in transdimensional microrifts!"

Jimmy gave back a shaky grin, heading around the bar to grab a bottle of his favorite beer. "Guess."

"Trying to dial 1-800-My-Angel?"

Jimmy waved the neck of the bottle at him. "Nope. Leave off the trying."

Ash stared at him with an open mouth, then leaned back in his seat like he was blasted there. "Whoa. You did it?"

"I did it." And damn, it was a triumph. An ache, too, on a whole lot of levels, but Jimmy couldn't help the rush of smug pride. Ash was a genius. Jimmy was an ad salesman. One of these things was not like the other, and Jimmy still managed to impress the guy. Couldn't exactly deny himself some sense of accomplishment in that.

Ash stared another moment, then broke into a wide smile. "You know what that means."

Jimmy stared back, and then groaned with an awkward half-laugh. "Oh, God. No. Not necessary."

"Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, it's necessary." Ash waved his hand, and the plaque over by the dartboard changed the Researcher of the Week to Jimmy's name and picture. "You get free drinks all week, you know."

"I get free drinks _anyway_ ," Jimmy complained, feeling his face heat. "I can't believe it finally worked."

Ash stared back at his laptop, working even as he was talking. "You have to tell me allllll about it, my man, because bending the ear of an angel without waiting for them to give you the time of day? Big Deal, capital letters."

"Technically a seraph, now, but still," Jimmy corrected, absently. He hadn't failed to notice the faint, in-and-out ghost-image of the extra two pairs of wings Cas sported, though they didn't manifest anything like his regular flight wings did. "And this is kind of a unique case; I mean, how many angels are walking around in their vessels, while said vessel's soul is in Heaven and actually _wants_ to talk to them?"

"Ah, man, it is _all_ contribution to the greater body of knowledge." Ash tapped a few commands into his laptop, probably running his translation and translocation program, then slid out of his seat and grabbed a beer can. "So, plan on sharing with the class?"

There were actually a lot of things Jimmy had no intentions of sharing. Like exactly what kind of frighteningly vulnerable state Cas was in. Was _still_ in, for that matter. It made Jimmy's skin itch that his angel was down there, out of his mind, and he didn't exactly have anything like faith in the Winchesters to make sure Cas stayed in one piece. They'd left him alone; there was no other explanation, because frankly, Dean's voice could have called Cas out of the dark with a minimum of effort. Which meant Dean had ditched him.

Though, given how Dean usually dealt with what he perceived as betrayal, Jimmy wasn't actually upset he'd taken the skedaddle route. He wished he knew if it was mercy or cowardice. He was fair enough to count it all as an actual betrayal, the lying and sneaking, but fuck Dean for not bothering to lend any weight to the motivations. A few minutes of empathy might have saved months and months of tragedy, in Jimmy's pretty informed opinion.

Cas's mind was a huge mess, but Jimmy remembered how to bridge that gap between them, even if it was a lot harder when they weren't actually in the same skin. So he pulled on that connection in ways he never had when they were actually in the same head, and therefore knew every stupid, bad decision his angel had made. He knew exactly how bad it had been. Every arrogant moment. Every moment of willful moral ambiguity, in the face of instinct and decency. Every unbalanced, mentally unsound choice. Every lie. Every shovelful digging Cas deeper into a narrow hole he couldn't spread his wings to fly out of.

Every brick, paving the road of good intentions.

The same angel that had cried his name so hard Jimmy could hear it in Heaven, was the same angel who went through Heaven with a metaphorical battle axe and ruthlessly cut down his siblings. Had precision targeted his own pet peeves on Earth. Had hurt his friends. Had unleashed smart, vicious monsters on an unsuspecting world.

And Jimmy didn't care. 

Well, okay. He did care. He still thought they were stupid, bad decisions. He still didn't like that _his body_ had been used to commit them. But he wasn't about to beat on a suicidal angel, especially since he knew exactly how easy it was for angels, as a species, to throw themselves suicidally and without thought into whatever cause they could that made sense to them, regardless of cost. Cas would punish himself right into even further stupidity if something didn't stand in the way, and probably pay with his life. Maybe if someone was standing behind him ready to pick him back up, he'd live long enough to come out the other side; more scarred, but more tempered.

_You remain a prick,_ he thought, in God's direction, and he'd done it enough times that he'd stopped worrying he might be blasted to Hell for it long ago. He wouldn't beat up on Cas, but Cas's Father? Fair game, Jimmy figured. That was one of the things he and Dean definitely agreed on.

In light of everything -- everything, from the Beginning to now -- forgiveness for Cas was surprisingly easy. Jimmy couldn't forgive him for anyone else's sake but his own, but for his own, he gave it and didn't regret it for a second.

"Helloooooo? Doctor Badass to Angel Whisperer, are you re _ceiving_?"

Jimmy blinked himself out of the somewhat convoluted, still achy tracks of his own thoughts and then nodded, bobbing his head. "Yeah. Here, give me a pen and paper, and I'll show you my spellwork."

 

 

 

Two hours later (after making Jimmy write down the method to go with his work), Ash sat back, huffing out his breath. "You _dream walked_ your angel? Seriously?"

Jimmy nodded, tracing over the scripts and sigils; it was complex, especially since he had to write it in three different languages, and none of them he was desperately proficient with when he didn't have an angel's translation running concurrent in his skull, but it wasn't like he didn't have time, and occasionally use of Ash's laptop. "Yeah. I mean, it's kind of sloppy and I wasn't sure it'd work given that angels don't actually _sleep_ , but it was the closest thing I could find to the connection we had when I was alive." He traced over Cas's name. "It wouldn't have worked, I don't think, if we weren't as close as we had gotten. I was using one of our..." he trailed off, biting down the brief flare of hurt and loss.

"Your?" Ash drew out the word like taffy, eyebrows up, after a moment.

"Traditions, I guess you could say." Jimmy glanced over and smiled a little sadly, then looked back at the paper, drumming his fingers over the name. "Something that meant something to both of us, that no one else knew about, because we kept it all inside our skull. And I kept losing him, but I finally managed to get a good grip and keep it, and then I was able to kind of pull us both... I dunno, the best way I can describe it is sideways? Midway? Because we'd dreamed together before, when he was practically human. So I managed to get him to come with me there."

Ash was already, clearly, considering the possibilities of that. If ever there was a man who was interested in figuring out every possible secret of Heaven (and how to unlock it), it was him. Jimmy marvelled often and unabashedly at just what Ash managed to accomplish under the noses of their angelic overseers.

Admittedly, there were a lot less of those, now.

Jimmy winced slightly, and rubbed his forehead. Wished he could just reopen that connection and go back to that garden and listen to Cas ramble on inanely, insanely, whatever crossed his scrambled mind. Even though he knew he had been the one coaxing Cas to go back to reality.

"All right, I'm gonna go back to my exile," he finally said, feeling inexplicably tired.

"Take a brew with you." Ash waved at the door without looking up from Jimmy's spellwork. "You know, I bet this can be modified? To talk to _human souls_. If I can figure it out, man, you will be on that plaque for a _month_."

That paused Jimmy, even as he was halfway to the door with an entire six-pack in hand. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I'll let you know if I crack it." Ash grinned, pulling the pen and a new sheet of paper to himself.

Jimmy thought for a moment, a very long moment, and then nodded and headed back out.

 

 

 

"Tom, get your plane right on time... I know your part'll go fine... Fly-y-y down to Mexico... da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da, and here I am, the only livin’ boy in New York...

“I get the news I need on the weather report… oh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report… Hey, I've got nothin' to do today but smile... do-da-do-da-do-da, and here I am.... the only livin’ boy in New York."

Jimmy sang to the nothingness that was Heaven and to all of the cracks he could see in it, even as he went to work touching up his sigils and scripts. Even though he knew they probably wouldn't work again, not without modification. And he'd start figuring that out, he would, but for now...

"Half of the time, we're gone but we don't know where, and we don't know... where..."

He just sang, and tried not to feel how thin his own voice alone sounded.

"...here I am..." He lost the flow of the song. "...let your honesty shine, shine, shine..."

It cracked along with his surroundings.

No one was listening.

"...like it shines on me... the only living boy in New York."


	6. VI.

**VI.**

**2009**

The sunset burned, and painted the heat-scoured ground underfoot in dusky violets and blues. Even through regular human eyes, without an angelic perspective, it was incredibly beautiful; mountains rose up in vague silhouette, lacking details, cutting the brilliance of the sky. Behind them, the first stars were winking into view.

Jimmy had seen a lot of beautiful things in the past few weeks. Things that went so far beyond what he could have ever imagined seeing in his lifetime. The ruins of Babylon. The city of Petra, in Jordan. Monasteries in Tibet. More places in the Middle East than he could recall even knowing existed, where Cas seemed to center his relentless search. He had been party to things he could have never fathomed, listened as Cas tried to find word amongst anyone who might know and grant him an audience. Learned things he thought were only myth and legend.

(For instance, it turned out that Zeus really was was a grade-A asshole, and that he wasn't above chucking a lightning bolt at an angel. And that Castiel wasn't above menacing right on back, glowing grace and calling down his own thunder included. It was an epic pissing contest, which neither of them won, and Jimmy was entertained -- perhaps unkindly -- by the fact that they had to awkwardly break off and go away to feel foolish.)

Jimmy was _exhausted_. He wasn't even the one expending the energy on this search, and he was exhausted.

Cas didn't get physically tired, and neither did Jimmy's body, but the angel still seemed somehow weary. Their talking had fallen quiet, and Jimmy had even fallen asleep when he just couldn't keep himself from it, leaving Cas to search alone until he woke again.

They had managed a surprising amount of conversation, though, just the two of them. Mostly trading stories -- Cas telling him of ancient times and places and peoples, and Jimmy just offering out random pieces of his own life. His first bicycle. His first home, in Chenoa. His mother's vinyl collection and how much trouble it was to move it when they moved houses. How he first met Ames. How the scariest thing that had ever happened to him before all of this was when he was sixteen and fell off a roofing ladder, tumbling two stories and breaking three bones. How the most annoying thing was using a coat hanger to scratch under the cast, too.

Honestly, he was kind of surprised he got as much attention as he did. He didn't think his bike with the silver bell touched on battling the forces of Hell across half of the Sahara, or of witnessing the births of kings. But Cas listened quietly, and occasionally asked questions to clarify something, and the longer they talked, the better Jimmy got at reading the moods of the comet he was keeping a grip on.

Right now, they were both tired, though, and had spent the last couple of days with only a few words back and forth, and Jimmy occasionally singing snippets of songs. Once or twice, Cas even hummed back at him, which made Jimmy grin internally, if not externally.

One thing that had changed was that at every stop, even if it was often only for a few minutes, Cas handed control back and Jimmy got to breathe the air of places he could have never expected to see in one lifetime, let alone a few weeks. Jimmy didn't even have to ask; it was just given, and eventually Cas even seemed to come to some measure of peace with it. Jimmy never knew what he was expecting to happen when he relinquished that control, if he expected something bad to happen in that short span of time, but apparently enough times had proven that it was safe enough for all the longer it lasted.

Jimmy had control right now, and had for probably fifteen minutes, which was by far the longest he'd had possession of his own body since he'd given it back to Cas.

He couldn't feel the weight of the wings at his back, but he could imagine how heavy they might have felt. He was almost reluctant to break into this near-peace, but finally he did, plunking them down on the ground and hearing Cas resettle his wings automatically to take into account the change in position. "Why the Outback?" he asked, resisting the urge to yawn.

_It seemed a good place to rest_ , Cas said, with the tone that Jimmy had come to correspond with a mental shrug. He did sound tired; Jimmy wondered if it was just from all the dead-ends, or if it had something to do with being cut off from Heaven. _It's very quiet here. In many ways._

Jimmy nodded, crossing his legs and leaning forward to rub his eyes. When he opened them again, he could feel some of Cas's perception bleed into his own. This spot, apparently, was pretty magic null; he couldn't see the currents that he often did elsewhere that Cas had identified as ley lines for him. Some color shifts, but nothing stronger, at least not on the layers he could bear to look through. "Are you okay?"

_Fine,_ Cas answered, one word. Still quiet.

They had both been thinking about Adrasteia's questions. They didn't really bring it up, but the feelings of the thoughts had become familiar enough that Jimmy could sense when Castiel was brooding over it, and he didn't doubt for a moment that went both ways. It lent a little bit of a frantic feeling to the search, and Jimmy had to wonder if Cas even understood why he was feeling the way he was.

Jimmy let him brood for a solid five minutes more, and then decided that was enough.

"Know any songs aside from _the_ song?" he asked.

It was always a little fun to feel an angel try to shift mental tracks. Cas wasn't anywhere near fluid with it. He took a long moment, then just answered, _Yes._

"Any I would know?"

_Some hymns, probably._

"Hm." Not what he had in mind. Jimmy rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands, then rested his chin on his knuckles. Chewed over his own mental music library, looking for something he could offer up to maybe lift both their spirits and energies up.

His mother had been a flower child, and Jimmy grew up listening to the music of that era. Which put him out of step with his peers both in church and in school, but he couldn't deal with disco or big hair or techno, and while he liked some of the stuff in the nineties, his go-to was always back to his Mom's vinyl collection. His idea of teenage rebellion had been an attempt to get into hard rock-and-roll, and okay, he did like a little of it. But then he just went back to what he knew and loved. Ames used to tease him about it, which just made him smile even more.

Which was why he laughed to himself now, hard, and accidentally startled the angel stuffed in his skin. "Okay. Okay, I've got one. Just jump in when you figure out the refrain, okay?"

_What-- what are--_

"Relax. Okay." Jimmy couldn't believe he was doing this, and he had two false starts before he managed to get over his laughter enough to start belting out, "Desmond has a barrow in the marketplace, Molly is the singer in a band! Desmond says to Molly, 'Girl, I like your face,' and Molly says this as she takes him by the hand: 'Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on.'"

_\--I’m not sure you're singing in the right register,_ Cas interrupted, sounding sort of gob-smacked.

"I don't care. C'mon, it'll make you feel better, I promise. It's a happy song." Jimmy grinned wider, and went on, "Desmond takes a trolley to the jewelry store, buys a twenty carat golden ring! Takes it back to Molly waiting at the door, and as he gives it to her she begins to sing-- give it a try, Cas --'Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on."

_Or the right key. This is ridiculous._

Would have worked better if Jimmy couldn't hear the rare and elusive vocal version of 'stoic angel smiling.' Which was why he sang even louder, even though his voice cracked briefly, "In a couple of years they have built a home sweet home... with a couple of kids running in the yard, of Desmond and Molly Jones!

"Happy ever after in the marketplace, Desmond lets the children lend a hand; Molly stays at home and does her pretty face, and in the evening she still sings it with the band..." Jimmy paused there, expectantly, and with a mental sigh he could have only cribbed from Jimmy, Cas jumped to sing with him in with his own voice, _"'Ob-la-di! Ob-la-da, life goes on, brah! Lala how the life goes on. Ob-la-di! Ob-la-da, life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on.’"_

It was the first time they'd ever sang at the same time, and even as he was trying hard not to laugh in utter _joy_ at the sound of an angel's voice singing the Beatles, of all things, Jimmy could only marvel at the sound of it. The air literally shivered around them, and he could feel it through his chest, his gut, his spine; it ached, it felt so good.

It made him wish that his own voice was even halfway worthy of joining Cas's.

He didn't stop singing, though. This was too good to pass up. And despite the 'this is madness' vibe he could feel, Cas sounded like he was having more fun than he would ever probably admit to when he harmonized the refrain.

"In a couple of years they have built a home sweet home... with a couple of kids running in the yard, of Desmond and Molly Jones!

"Happy ever after in the marketplace, Molly lets the children lend a hand; Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face, and in the evening she's a singer with the band, yeah! _'Ob-la-di! Ob-la-da! Life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on. Ob-la-di! Ob-la-da! Life goes on, brah! Lala, how the life goes on.’_ "

And Jimmy finished, laughing, "And if you want some fun, sing ob-la-di-bla-da!"

The Outback (and probably the world) had never seen the like; an angel and an angel's vessel, singing the Beatles in duet.

Jimmy was still grinning like a loon when he heard Cas's quiet chuckle. And when he handed back control and settled in for a nap, he was sure that he was going to add more songs yet to Cas's repertoire.

 

 

 

Two days later, he caught Cas humming it absently in their head as they were winging it back to Jerusalem, and managed not to cackle that he'd planted an earworm on an Angel of the Lord.

 

 

 

_Jeremiah was a bullfrog--!_

_Jeremiah was a prophet, Jimmy._

_\--was a good friend of mine! I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him a'drink his wine. (And he always had some mighty fine wine.)_

_Well, at least that part is accurate._

_Singin' 'joy to the world! And all the boys and girls, now; joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me!'_

It was rapidly becoming one of Jimmy's favorite games. Song-bombing Cas. He always made sure to do it when they weren't in any place that might be dangerous, and he usually tried to steer clear of the more politically loaded stuff, but the fact that it felt good, and the fact that Cas gave in eventually and sang harmony (even if mostly in their head, unless they were far away from other people) made it the perfect way to keep in touch when they ran out of things to say.

It didn't change the fact that they found themselves without any allies, in the end. That Cas was narrowing in on the idea of potentially getting them blown up again by trying to trap Raphael and interrogate him. That he was worried about Sam and Dean. That they ended up interrogating and smiting demons left and right in an attempt to gain any kind of useful intelligence at all. That there were enough close shaves with other angels that they both felt the blade at their back.

But it felt good. It was something. And it made them both smile.

 

 

_I like your voice,_ Cas said, out of nowhere, this time catching Jimmy off-guard, who had been brooding himself about everything. About his family. About this search. About how many dead ends there were, and with no end in sight.

It took a moment to realize it was an answer to his unvoiced thought that he wasn't worthy of singing alongside an angel back in the Outback, and if Jimmy could have slung an arm around Cas when he realized that, he would have.

 

 

One day, just to see what kind of answer he got back, Jimmy sang a little three-note, six beat song. And with the vocal equivalent of a quiet smile, Cas sang back the song he knew best and deepest. And Jimmy was so pleased with it, that later it became his habit to occasionally ping off of Cas that way; to get his attention, or to draw him out, or just to let him know they were in this together.

And even as they embarked on a potentially lethal plan to trap Raphael, even as Cas decided he needed to get Dean's help with it, neither of them knew just how important that call and response would become.


	7. VII.

**VII.**

**2011**

"I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told; I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles such are promises. All lies and jests! Still, a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest," Jimmy sang to himself, "Mmmm, hm mmm..."

The only thing worse than failing to break through to the veil was succeeding and then not being able to easily do it again.

Jimmy thought he might go crazy several times the past few weeks.

There was only so long he could hang out at the Roadhouse, even though he liked it there. It was one of his favorite places, because the illusion there was stronger than just about anywhere else. That, he attributed to Ash and Ash's mad skills at manipulating his reality. Jimmy could still see the cracks bleeding through, the same cracks that Ash used to intercept the chattering of the angels, but it didn't seem nearly so jarring.

But even then, he could only do it for so long before he had to escape and think.

Everyone -- excepting Ash -- tended to look at Jimmy funny. Various hunters and those associated. Jo and Ellen were okay, Bill wasn't too bad, and Jimmy and Jo occasionally ended up as research partners for a few hours here or there on the nature of those -- as Ash called them -- transdimensional microrifts, but everyone else didn't know what to make of him. He wasn't a hunter. He was just a guy who happened to have spent a couple of years sharing skin with an angel, and when they weren't eying him warily for that, they were explaining things to him like he was a two-year-old.

The urge to tell them that he'd been a party to smiting more demons than any of them had ever laid eyes on, probably combined, was ridiculous but powerful. Jimmy managed to keep that to himself, though.

"When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy in the company of strangers; in the quiet of the railway station runnin' scared. Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go, lookin' for the places only they would know," he sang, testing a new sigil on one of the unused cracks running through the half-substantial grass of his heaven. "Lie la lie, lie la lie lie lie lie lie..."

Jimmy's heaven was looking less and less like a heaven and more and more like a barren space devoid of anything except for glowing cracks and angelic scripts and carefully set sigils, and he was kind of grimly proud of it. He had a creepy, nerve-wracking suspicion that if any angels stopped by, he'd end up confronted about what he was doing or worse, but anything beat pretending to relive his glory moments. His spells were pretty focused on his angel only, and he hoped that would keep it off their metaphorical radar, but he knew he was playing with fire at any given moment.

Luckily, it appeared that for now, they were all distracted by the Word of God showing up on Earth. Like the broken, abandoned beings that they were, they dedicated themselves to trying to get ahold of the words of their Father. Ash had told him last time they visited that it was the Metatron's tablets that had caught everyone's attention, and it was presumably that which jolted Cas back to reality when he wasn't too far from heading back there on his own.

Even as he was glad for their distraction, Jimmy couldn't help but feel sympathy for them.

"Asking only workman's wages, I come lookin' for a job but I get no offers, just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue; I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there, la la la la la la laaa..."

That was another thing that set him apart from everyone else. To everyone else, depending on who you asked, angels were either something they continued to revere, or something 'other' that was the enemy. Those who had died before the Apocalypse tended to see them as holy beings to be respected. Those who died after tended to view them as something to _hunt_. There were occasions when he'd managed to get caught in those rare gatherings of more'n a few people at the Roadhouse, and he always felt like he was in the crossfire when that debate started.

And honestly, Jimmy couldn't blame either side for how they felt, but he was pretty sure that he was closer to the truth than any of them. He'd tried to explain to them just how angels think, but after they refused to get it for the fifth or sixth time, he gave up and just set about keeping his head down and his research moving forward.

"Then I'm laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone, goin' home, where the New York City winters aren't bleedin' me. Leading me-eeee, goin' home..."

He kept drawing his spellwork; this time, a variation on crossing heavenly borders, tangled up messily but hopefully not catastrophically with his dream walking spell. He wasn't holding out a whole lot of hope for it, though.

"Whoa."

Ash's voice made him jump out of his skin, and Jimmy whirled around with the trail of blue magic following his fingertips like an after image before fading. "Jesus, Ash," he said, holding his hand over his heart.

Ash looked around at his spellwork, mouth agape. Then he blinked and grinned wanly and sympathetically at Jimmy. "You need hobbies, man. This place is _gutted_."

Jimmy just shrugged; he wasn't about to point out that aside this, singing and sleeping, there wasn't much else for him around here. Absent his occasional trips to the Roadhouse, anyway. "So, what's the news?"

Ash grinned more openly, then. "Guess what I did?" he asked, sing-songy.

"Invented a new beer cannon?" Jimmy asked back, eyebrows up.

"Cracked your dream walking spell and figured out how to modify it to talk to living souls. Only problem is, Jimbo, it'll only work if someone's already been here; they leave behind these traces, and I've figured out how to follow the trail." Ash dragged a lock of his mullet hair around and sucked on it for a moment, then flung it back over his shoulder, thoughtful and absent. "I mean, you can pick anyone you know who's had a near death experience and maybe I can track 'em down, but you and I both know there're only two likely candidates."

"Dean and Sam," Jimmy said, dropping his head to sigh at the ground. Frankly, the first person he would have dream walked would have been Amelia, just to apologize for himself and give her his pleas to move on and be happy if she already hadn't, but...

"Got it. And the only candidates we got who can really pull it off are you and Jo. Her 'cause of that Osiris crap that went down, and you 'cause you've already done it once." Ash scuffed his boot into the ground, absent motion. "Sorry I couldn't give you better, man. I mean, I'll keep on it, but it's the best I've got right now."

Jimmy looked down at his hands, then around at his spellwork. "I'll take it."

 

 

The Roadhouse was glowing with finger-painted spellwork, and it was beautiful in ways only someone with a bit of angelic perspective could see.

There were surprisingly few messages to pass on. Jo had already said what she wanted to say to Dean last time she was there; she was only here now as backup, in case something went wrong and someone needed to follow the threads and drag Jimmy back. Pretty much everyone only wanted to pass on greetings and reassurances, once it was decided that they couldn't burden Dean with chasing down other peoples' loved ones to pass on messages, and Jimmy couldn't help but think, _Typical._

Most people were content with heaven. They actually were _content_ here. Even though Ellen was happy enough to visit with Ash, she was happier crossing between Bill's and Jo's and her own heavens, under the custom door Ash made for her. Jo enjoyed the challenge of research, but she wasn't looking for anything huge, either. Ash was the closest to Jimmy insofar as he wasn't content to rest on laurels and memories, but even he was doing it because he had a scientist's brilliance, not because he was a restless spirit with reality issues. All of them liked having the ability to shape their own heavens, which they could do thanks to Ash's relentless efforts, but mostly they were happy.

Sometimes, especially at times like this, Jimmy Novak envied them so hard that he was amazed he didn't turn literally green.

To be able to let go. To live in dreams. To be content with things.

He wasn't technically leaving Heaven now. Dream walking was more like throwing a projection of yourself on a wall, than it was actually being there. Projecting consciousness, instead of your whole being. Once he managed to bridge the gap, it was easy with Cas; Cas had the power to dream walk himself, and they knew each other like two halves of a whole, so creating a stable space they could hide in together was ridiculously easy. Where Jimmy's strength would have faltered, Cas's was near infinite, especially for something that required so little effort for a seraph. Jimmy might have given form and color to the dream, but Cas had been the one to power it.

Dean, on the other hand, was just another human being with a human soul. And as powerful as those were, Jimmy wasn't going to count on having all that long to say his piece, if he could even crack into that unbelievably thick skull long enough to do it.

"Okay, I think we got everything," Ash said, scanning the spellwork on the walls and then looking back at Jimmy, who was standing in the center of something that was reminiscent of a devil's trap only in that it was circular and covered in Latin and Enochian. "You're gonna have to concentrate like _no tomorrow_ , and no promises."

"No promises," Jimmy answered, forcing a half smile.

"Good luck," Jo said, reaching out to give his hand a squeeze.

That made Jimmy smile for real, and he gave her fingers a squeeze back, before letting go and closing his eyes. "Okay. Let's do this."


	8. VIII.

**VIII.**

**2009**

_In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade,_ Jimmy sang, fiercely, _and he carries the reminders of every glove the laid him down or cut him 'til he cried out, in his anger and his shame, 'I am leaving, I am leaving,' but the fighter still remains._

The battle-scarred angel reached up and pressed his hand to Jimmy's through the mirror's glass, a moment of vulnerability between them.

 _Yes,_ he said. _He does._

They said nothing else about Raphael, and what Raphael had told them.

 

 

 

This was the sum of their lives until they got word of the Colt: Fly, fight and flee. In that order.

The reputation Cas was getting amongst the underbelly of the universe made life harder and easier all at once; harder because the demons, at this point, often fled before he could burn them out of the people they were possessing, though he managed to surprise enough to still rack up a decent count. Easier because when he did manage to ambush one, they were a whole lot more forthcoming. This was how they began piecing together that the Colt still existed, though not who had it.

But it also meant they were getting ever more attention from the angels, all of whom were under orders to find the Winchesters. And if they could capture the Winchesters' steadily weakening guardian, all the better.

Cas carried himself with a soldier's bearing; intent in battle, and now that he and Jimmy were on better terms, infinitely more fluid. It wasn't hard to see just how _good_ Castiel was at war. He was spare and economical in movement, no wasted effort, but even more, he was quick-witted. Even against a fully powered angel, he could think and adjust his tactics in a split-second. He could lay an ambush, anticipating ahead what his opponents were thinking; he could set up traps and his spellwork was frighteningly good. And the longer he fought, the better he got; not like this was new to him, but like it was something etched into his grace that he was renewing from wars long over.

It was always a little mystifying for Jimmy to try to reconcile this hardened warrior with the angel who had, in an outright _panic_ , woken Jimmy from a much-needed rest to find he was being undressed by a _hooker_. That the same angel who pretended not to have fun singing some of the more silly songs with Jimmy was the same angel who was an artist with a sword.

Jimmy didn't even get scared anymore, when it came to a fight, even if it could kill them both. He just... didn't.

He wondered what that said about him. About them. About any of it. That he was getting so used to being faced with the blade that it didn't even frighten him.

They looked down at the body of the woman who had served as a vessel for one of Cas's sisters, and the black ashen wings burned into the ground beneath her.

Cas had no words for this, and Jimmy had no song.

 

 

 

This was the sum of their lives after they passed on word of the Colt: Fight, fly and flee, in that order.

There never seemed to be any time for respite, aside in rare moments here or there. Just neverending motion, a grim determination to keep seeking God, and in the meantime, to try to help the Winchesters. They tried to help each other, too, but between the constant searching and the constant fighting outside, they'd all but lost touch with one another, neither having the heart for conversation or even song. These were long days, where they only really managed to bounce their call and response back and forth, before retreating back to their own metaphorical corners and the numbness of waging war. Jimmy stayed awake for as much of it as he could; even if they didn't speak, he didn't want to leave Cas go through it alone.

Which was why it came as such a blow when it did come to blows.

The first fight they had since coming to a truce was over the boy, Jesse Turner. It was also the last fight they ever had.

_Imagine not one or two or three, imagine thousands, Jimmy. Thousands of angels, burned to ash! There's no other way._

Castiel was in full-on warrior mode, and Jimmy was horrified that Cas could justify killing a child, even a powerful one. It was one of the rare times when Jimmy was in agreement with Dean about anything. He could hear the regret the angel's tone, but there was a resolve there that was, frankly, terrifying. A soldier's bearing, implacable and unyielding.

_He's a child, Castiel! He didn't ask for this, he didn't ask to be made this! You can't do this. You can't begin to justify it!_

_It's what must be done!_ It was rare when Cas raised his voice, internally or externally, but he did now. _What of the people he's already killed, intentionally or not? If Lucifer gets him, he will be corrupted, and Lucifer will get him. This is the only way._

 _You are not using my hands to kill a little boy, Cas._ If Jimmy had control of his body, he'd be trembling right now with anger and fear. He wasn't entirely sure, either, that if he tried to take control of it back right now, he wouldn't succeed. If it came down to it, he absolutely would do his best to.

He felt the shift only a moment before it happened, and then Cas said, more quietly, _I'm sorry, Jimmy._

And everything went dark.

 

 

 

When he opened his eyes, he had no idea how long later, he was back in the no-space they had been in when they were resurrected.

Jimmy just felt... numb. Tired, and disappointed, and numb.

He knew all of Cas's forms; from the edgeless, nebulous shift of color and light that was his truest form, to the fearsome visage of an angel, bright and glorious and mostly man-shaped, to any number of variations on that, including different animalistic heads, and right down to a perfect twin of himself. He knew them all and recognized them all without so much as a pause -- they were all _Castiel_ \-- and in front of him in this no-space, Cas was all of them or none of them, depending on which layer Jimmy decided to align himself with.

Finally, he just picked the form of his more ethereal twin; himself, but for soft glowing gold and blue, and silverlight-edged wings. The one he preferred for its familiarity and its _otherness_ , all at the same time.

"Jesse Turner lives," Cas said, the growl he'd turned Jimmy's voice into overlaying the almost painfully beautiful tones of his own voice; somehow, even then, he harmonized. He had his chin tipped up slightly, like he was facing a firing squad, but there wasn't really any defiance in his eyes, nor any apology on his face. Just the weight of weariness; enough frustration to knot his jaw.

Jimmy pressed his lips together, just studying him. He wanted to be angry. Some part of him probably was, but mostly he felt tired and disappointed.

And hurt. A quiet hurt. But hurt.

"He lives, and he has escaped. He overpowered me with a mere thought, and he was gone when I was restored. No one will find him, unless he wants to be found." Cas dropped his gaze, then, looking anywhere but at Jimmy. "I-- the power the boy had--" His hand twitched at his side, and he stared off into the nothing around them, taking a breath he didn't need to take before trying again, "I had to act. I _had_ to act."

"Look at me," Jimmy said, and tried to summon up some kind of anger. But his voice just sounded flat. He waited until Cas finally did manage to look back at him, and he wasn't surprised to see the guilt creeping into the angel's expression. "Would you have done it?"

"I was about to."

"Would you have?"

Cas flicked his gaze away. "I was going to."

"Look at me," Jimmy said again, calmly, finally feeling a mix between frustration and some kind of quiet desperation. When he got what he wanted, he asked again, " _Would_ you have?"

"He was the antichrist!" Cas snapped, losing some of his composure, taking half a step to the side. Restlessness, not escape; Jimmy knew just how vulnerable they both were to the outside world when they were face-to-face in here like this, and how nervous that was making Cas.

He just didn't care right now. This was more important.

Cas gestured, frustrated. "It doesn't matter--"

"That he was a little boy?" Jimmy raised his eyebrows. "Cas, how _doesn't_ that matter?"

Cas managed to shut himself back down to stoicism, but not quite so far that Jimmy couldn't see the turmoil raging behind the thin veneer of calm. In an almost perfect mirror of Jimmy's expression, he just pressed his lips together and looked away, eyes scanning the no-space around them like there was some magical answer to it all there.

Jimmy shook his head, stepping closer. "Castiel. Would you have?"

The angel closed his eyes for a long moment, and then finally admitted, shoulders and wings falling slightly, "I don't know, Jimmy. I had the knife, I had him--" he looked down at his hand, palm open. "--I was going to. I didn't want to. I don't know if I would have."

That was a little better than Jimmy had expected. He nodded, at length. "Why?"

"Why?"

"Didn't you want to."

Cas shifted again, still avoiding meeting Jimmy's unwavering gaze. "He didn't ask to be made that."

Jimmy nodded again. Didn't look away. He took his time, and he thought about it. About all of it, everything that came before, and everything that came since their truce, and everything he knew about the angel currently standing before him.

"You didn't ask to be made this, either, did you?" he finally asked, but it wasn't really a question at all.

Cas snapped his gaze back on Jimmy, and it blazed bright blue and hot. _Bingo,_ Jimmy thought, even as the angel actually flared out his wings in a moment of anger and indignation, bordering on downright _wrath_. "This? A soldier? This is what I _am_ , James Novak," he said, both voices just as fierce as his posturing. "I was made this, whether or not I asked for it is inconsequential!"

Jimmy didn't hesitate to step closer, putting himself right in Cas's space, not the least bit intimidated by the display. He narrowed his eyes, finally feeling some of his own wrath, and pressed his palm to Cas's chest, hard. "You asked for _my help_ , Castiel. You asked for my help, and in a moment where I was trying desperately to help you, you _shut me down_. I have been with you through all of this, I have flown with you and fought with you, and I don't think you ever needed me more than you did right in that moment!"

"I didn't want you to see it," Cas answered, still hotly, but there was an uncertainty there now.

Jimmy pressed his advantage, looking hard into the ethereal version of his own eyes. "You asked me for my help. You asked, and ever after I've been here to give it. And you were going to use my hands to murder a _little boy_." He softened his tone, shaking his head a little, all without looking away. "Cas, how was I going to live with that, if you'd gone through with it?"

That hit home; Jimmy could see the little flinch, and then Cas looked away again. "It wasn't you wielding the knife."

"My hands. Regardless of who controlled them. My consent to let you use them." Jimmy pressed briefly harder with his palm. "A little boy's blood, on my hands. On your hands. How would I have lived with it?"

Cas had no answer; his jaw knotted and he stared hard off into the nothingness, breathing despite not needing to.

"It matters," Jimmy said, barely unclenching his own jaw enough to do so. " _It matters_. It matters that he didn't ask to be made that, it matters that you might have covered my hands in his blood, it matters that you shut me down after all we've gone through together, and yeah, it matters that you didn't ask to be made this, either."

"Stop," Castiel ordered, looking back at him again, eyes narrowed.

Jimmy didn't flinch. "I see you, Cas," he said, hand pressed where Cas's heart would be. "You asked for my help, now let me give it."

There was a crack in the great angelic wall of stoicism, a flash of genuine misery, and Cas bit out, "Jimmy--"

"This should have never happened." Jimmy wasn't even sure how much 'this' he was covering in that statement. Jesse. The shut down. But maybe further. Maybe all of it. Maybe everything. "Look at me."

Cas pulled his restless gaze back again, but most of the aggression was gone. Now, he just looked weary and sore, and like he was fully expecting to be more weary and more sore in short order. Too old. Too young, too.

"We're not gonna let this happen again, right?" Jimmy asked, searching the angel's face intently.

There was a long, long moment where Cas looked back at him, conflicted and struggling, and under it a sort of-- almost desperate loneliness.

And also just a little of something that might tentatively, in some way, be called hope.

He dropped his head, then, and looked at his own hand. And then he reached up with it; hesitated, thought, fought with himself, and finally he pressed it to Jimmy's chest in a mirror, the breaths he didn't need to take falling into synch with Jimmy's.

Something unwound in the quiet between them, and Cas said, "I--" A beat. "--we will not let this happen again."

 

 

 

It was a few days later, when Cas said, "I'm sorry." And it was the truth, and it was heavy with that truth.

It wasn't hard for Jimmy to answer, with gentle but cutting honesty, "I know. Me too."


	9. IX.

**IX.**

**2011**

Jimmy found himself staring at a neat bullet hole in Bobby Singer's head.

Just like that, all of the piss and vinegar he'd managed to save up to lay on Dean Winchester drained away.

He swung his head around, disoriented; Dean's mindscape was painted in reds and blacks, echoes of Hell, and when he looked back again, Bobby was still there, except now he was draining black ooze all over the place. From his eyes, from his mouth, from his nose, from the hole in his head.

Jimmy only became aware his teeth were literally chattering when he heard Dean's voice, ragged and broken, ask, "Cas?"

"Not quite," Jimmy answered, fighting down his trembling, turning and taking in the wretched sight of Dean, crumbled at the edge of a reservoir -- _the_ reservoir -- sitting on his knees in mud and ooze with their overcoat in his hands. And utterly despite himself, the vision made his heart ache; the tear tracks cut down Dean's face, a vulnerability that Jimmy knew from observation he only allowed himself when he was so overcome he couldn't manage to beat it back by sheer force of personality, and maybe in dreams where almost no one could see.

"Oh, Dean," he sighed, walking that way, offering his hand out against his better judgement. "Come on, we have to talk, and there are definitely better places to do it than this."

Dean looked so confused and lost; probably having a hard time figuring out why Jimmy Novak of Pontiac, Illinois was in his head. "--who?" He blinked twice, slow. "Jimmy."

Jimmy managed an encouraging if wan grin, and reached down to get the hunter's limp hand in his. "Yeah, that's me. I need you to think us some place a little less grisly, okay? Can you do that?"

Dean's eyes skittered briefly across and past Jimmy's face. And then they were sitting on a dock, overlooking a lake. Next to them was beer and a fishing rod.

"Much better," Jimmy said, giving one last little shudder, letting go of Dean's hand with an impulsive squeeze. "You with me?"

"You're-- are you still--?" Dean asked, still kind of disoriented.

"No. No, I'm dead. Have been since Lucifer turned Cas and I into a fine red mist." Jimmy settled himself comfortably on the wooden planks. "I don't know how much time I have. Jo, Ellen, Ash -- everyone says hi, and that they're okay, and that they hope you're okay. That's the first thing I have to say."

Dean was getting his bearings now, absently mopping his face off, eyes sharpening steadily. It was like watching a soldier pulling on body armor, and Jimmy didn't really want to let himself draw parallels, but he kind of ended up doing it anyway. "Okay, wait a fricken minute," he said, glancing around before looking back intently at Jimmy. "You're dead. I met you like, _once_ , man. Why are you here?"

"Because I'm not a figment of your imagination," Jimmy answered, resisting the urge to brag. Something about Dean always made him want to knock him down a peg. "I'm here because of Cas."

There was absolutely no way that this conversation would be warm and fuzzy. No one needed to tell Jimmy that they both had strong and volatile opinions about that angel, and looking back, Jimmy kind of regretted that he hadn't asked Cas to let him talk to Dean before now. But then again, maybe not. Maybe neither of them would have been ready to say it or hear it back then. He didn't know.

Just like he expected, Dean completely failed to get it. "Look, I'm sorry he stole your meatsuit, but--"

"I gave it to him. He can have it. Dean, I wish I was still in it with him." Jimmy shook his head, gestured in no particular direction. "A whole lot's happened since you last talked to me. Which is why I'm here now. I spent God only knows how long, before he woke up, dream walking him and pulling him out of the worst kind of place. Okay? And I'm here to make sure you don't go shoving him right back into it."

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, eyebrows furrowing, and Jimmy could see the defensiveness amping up. "The only thing I'm shoving him into? Is cleaning up the mess _he made_. If you think I'm gonna coddle him after he declared himself God and unleashed all these things that killed a bunch of people, including _Bobby_ , you got another thing coming."

"You know what, Dean? You're an asshole." Jimmy's smile was more a baring of teeth. Then he took a breath, and shook his head, trying to center himself and calm down. Throwing fire at Dean was asking for nuclear warheads back most of the time; he wasn’t going to do any good with that tactic. "I get it. I know what he did. I get it, I'm not saying you have to forgive him, I'm not saying you have to coddle him. He screwed up and it was huge, I'm not brushing that off. I'm not even saying you have to-- no, you know, I've got it." He leaned forward, until he was right in Dean's space, forcing the hunter to lean back slightly. "Let me tell you a story."

Dean rolled his head and rolled his eyes, barking a laugh, "Oh, yeah. What I need is a fairy tale."

"Yes, you do," Jimmy said, hand shooting forward to grab Dean by the collar of his shirt and give him a shake. Dean grabbed his wrist, eyes narrowed dangerously, but Jimmy didn't let go. "Once upon a time, Dean. Once upon a time, God made His archangels, and they were beautiful and bright and innocent things, and He made them to love Him unconditionally. They had free will, they actually did, all of them do, but they never had to exercise it because there was nothing to exercise it against. And then He made all of the other angels, Dean, and they were also beautiful, and bright, and innocent things, who only knew how to be beautiful, bright, innocent things. After all, what was war, when there was nothing in the universe to wage it against? What was pain, when you had been made before it existed? All they knew, _all they knew_ , was love and joy and song. And that includes your angel. _My_ angel."

Dean stared back at him, but Jimmy could see him listening. The grip on his wrist didn't move, but Dean didn't interrupt.

"But then He made us. And all this took millions and millions of years, but angels don't think like us, when it comes to time -- what is time worth when everything is perfect? What meaning could it have? They went on being bright, happy things, singing and taking joy in the creations their Father made. Until we became a reality. Until Lucifer got jealous. And all that took a long time, but then Lucifer nursed his grudge to action, and found something to push back against and bam, he turns on God and tries to turn his brother to his side. Then he gets cast down, and he makes Lilith, several thousand years ago."

"I know all this already," Dean said, not as belligerently as he probably wanted to be. "He threw a tantrum, and Michael threw him in the Pit."

"That's only part of the story." Jimmy let go of Dean's shirt a split second before Dean let go of his wrist. He shook his head. "Lucifer acted out, and then God committed the first major act of domestic violence in the universe. He didn't just tell Michael to cast Lucifer down, He raged. He had him cast out any of Lucifer's sympathizers, too. He took His oldest son and made Him hurt the brother He loved. He _terrified_ the Host, Dean. Those beautiful, innocent things He made, He taught them how to _fear_. And then, to top off the sundae of prickishness, He turned them into soldiers to fight all of the ones that He cast out! The rank-and-file angels, the choir? They were the equivalent of children -- frightened children -- and the ones He didn't seemingly arbitrarily throw out, He made into warriors. Including your angel. My angel."

The world around them shifted, and Jimmy watched as the clouds rolled in, cooling everything off. Dean worked his jaw, but he just kept staring at Jimmy, and then he raised himself a little in Jimmy's estimation by giving a short nod for Jimmy to go on.

Maybe now was the right time for this.

Jimmy felt some tension bleed out of his shoulders even as a shiver crawled down his spine, and offered the barest little half-smile, before continuing, "God terrified them, then He changed them in answer to Lucifer, and then He abandoned them with a handful of instructions and without explanation and left broken kids to raise broken kids. And the older broken kids went to extremes to prevent disobedience and do whatever they could to ensure perfection in the younger broken kids. Is it any wonder that they're such a mess now that they're all grown up? Dean. I'm not asking you to forgive Cas for his screw ups. I'm just asking you to remember that just like Sam didn't ask to be weaponized at six months old, like you didn't ask to be weaponized as a single-digit kid, Castiel didn't ask to be weaponized, either, and he _was_. And just like you, he got raised from child soldier to messed up adult, and didn't get a say in any of it."

Dean's face screwed up briefly, and for half a second, Jimmy actually thought he might break down. Which was kind of a shock.

Maybe Cas wasn't entirely delusional. Remained to be seen.

Jimmy took a breath, and said, knowing it would hit home and counting on that fact, "And he didn't have any Bobbys around to help soften it, anyone to teach him the right way to do things; he's had to figure it out the hard way every step of the way, with only other broken siblings to guide him. So forgive him or not. But remember this, if you remember nothing else: Despite all that crap I just told you, that angel cares about you so much that he rebelled even though he was hurt for it, he rebelled even though he was scared, he fought brothers and sisters he loved, he paid in blood and grace, and died for you twice over, and no matter how bad he screwed up, he will die for you again trying to make it right."

"This is an awfully chick-flicky fairy tale, Novak," Dean said, after a moment, forcing a smirk. But his eyes were troubled, and deeply so.

Jimmy shrugged, playing off the attitude to preserve Dean's composure. "I'm dead, I can afford to be emotionally honest. You should try it sometime, you might not come across as such a dick."

"Hey, you're the dick tearing me a brand new asshole in my own dreams," Dean answered, with a faux-casual shrug of his own.

"Nah. I'm just telling you the truth." Jimmy looked around; he didn't honestly know how much longer he could pull this off. He actually felt _tired_ , a creeping cold exhaustion sucking at his center. He looked back at Dean, leaning forward again just a little. "I died for you twice, too. The second time? I did it with eyes wide open. We did. So you could try to reach Sam. So, I need you to do something for me. I need you to keep Cas alive." He saw the question in Dean's eyes, and smiled a little, sadly, "Dean, I was the wall you used to back him into. I'm not there anymore, though I'm trying my heart out to get back. If you push him too far or the wrong way, I'm not there anymore to hold him up and have his back. Not yet, maybe not ever. But definitely not right now."

Jimmy didn't even realize, until he had said it, that it was the truth. That he meant to permanently make it back. He shook it off, though, and finished, "I need you to do this for me. Forgive or don't, Dean, that's your choice, but keep him alive. Your angel. My angel. Don't let him latch onto the next cause in an effort to fix things or die trying, because he will."

Dean studied Jimmy for a long moment, then nodded, blowing a breath out through his nose. It was a rare open expression on his face, serious and even kind. And for the first time, Jimmy kind of maybe got what Cas saw in him. "I will. I'll try. Okay?"

Jimmy nodded back. "Good. Maybe if you have each others' backs, you'll both make it out alive."

Dean scoffed. "Soon as he stops chasing bees or rambling about monkeys or whatever. I wouldn't let him hold a can opener right now, let alone watch my skin."

"My fault. I was laying on the pacifism pretty thick. I'd rather he go flower power than suicide bomber." Jimmy closed his eyes at the confirmation that Cas was still comparatively okay, though. God, was that a relief. He didn't know what he had expected, but better to go chasing bees than pick a penance and die on it.

"Yeah," Dean said. Then, more softly, like he was coming to some kind of conclusion he might have already been working towards, he added, "Me too."

Jimmy let out the breath he had probably been metaphorically holding for weeks, and dropped his head, rubbing his eyes and then looking back up at Dean, fighting down another shiver. "You're not too bad," he finally said. "Any messages for the heavenly crew?"

"Uh, no." The corner of Dean's mouth crept up, then he gave an awkward half-shrug. "Just, you know, the usual. All good, still alive, still kicking monster ass. And uh--"

"Keep an eye out for Bobby," Jimmy said softly.

"Yeah." Dean's bottom lip quivered; he tightened his mouth to stop it. "Take care of Bobby."

Jimmy just nodded. "Be seeing you, maybe. Take care of yourself, too, Dean."

Dean nodded back, and there was something just that hair closer to peace in his eyes, even with his mouth still set in a line. "You too, man."

 

 

 

Dean didn't end up remembering much of what he dreamed. But he remembered enough, that when Cas said he detected a note of forgiveness, Dean didn't deny it.

And really, that was all it took.

 

 

 

_Hello darkness, my old friend... I've come to talk with you again..._

Jimmy was immediately aware of being very, very cold. Which shouldn't have actually been possible in Heaven, because of all that perfect peace and harmony stuff, but he was. His head felt like it was under cold water, and he could kind of hear people talking to him, but they sounded so muffled he couldn't make it out.

Though, they did sound kind of... excited?

_Because a vision softly creeping... left its seeds while I was sleeping..._

Something was shaking him.

He kind of swatted at it.

_And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains... within the sound of silence..._

"Jimmy! C'mon, Jimbo, c'mon, you're okay, man."

Ash. Jimmy managed to pry his eyes open on the next attempt, teeth chattering again. Ash swam in front of him in all of his mulleted glory, and the blonde blur must have been Jo.

"M'good," he forced out, eyes falling closed again.

"Ohhhhh, man. No. You are the furthest thing from it," another voice broke in. "You're in a river of shit now, kid."

And despite feeling like he was encased in a block of ice, Jimmy's eyes snapped back open and he turned his head to meet the angry amber gaze of--

_"Gabriel?"_


	10. X.

**X.**

**2009**

_Who the Hell puts an angel in a commercial tumble dryer?!_ Jimmy asked, incredulously, breaking his usual 'don't speak up during dangerous situations' policy. He couldn't even bear to look out through his own eyes to see for more than a few moments; just what little he could make out sensation-wise was enough to make him desperately motion sick.

_I don't know,_ Cas answered, trying to brace himself against the sides to get leverage to kick open the door. Even his internal voice sounded woozy and dazed, and Jimmy was pretty sure they looked like they had gone a few rounds with a heavyweight champion, given the bruises he could barely feel. _Not likely a trickster,_ Cas added, not quite as an afterthought.

At least whoever had stuck them in here hadn't turned it on high heat or anything. The measure of Cas's strength was getting steadily shorter, and trying to keep them alive from the beating Jimmy could feel them getting and not letting them get baked at the same time might have gone beyond what the angel was capable of.

For now, he could feel his body panting from effort, and for the first time, he honestly wasn't sure which of them was causing it. Or if they both were.

_Wings?_ he asked, hopefully; Cas's wings weren't on this layer of reality most of the time. He should be able to use them.

_Bound. Not sure why. This is very confining,_ Cas said, sounding even worse.

_Can you get your hands on the back and feet on the front?_

There was a long moment, and a lot of getting bounced, but then the beating ended. Though the spinning didn't. Jimmy could easily hear the soles of his black dress shoes squealing against the small glass portal. _Done. Now what?_ Cas asked, miserably.

Jimmy was so surprised he almost forgot to reply, _Concentrate and kick as hard as you can._ He made the mistake of looking out and immediately regretted it.

He could feel Cas wind up and cut loose on the door, spinning against the glass on one foot, and lashing out with the other.

Thank whatever mercy there was in the universe that the door gave on the first try. Cas managed to get them out, and landed in an untidy heap on the concrete floor with a quiet groan, breathless, wings askew.

_Amen,_ Jimmy groaned back.

 

 

 

The flight back to Sam and Dean wasn't any fun, either; Cas pulled them back together enough to move, but he was still a mess by the time he landed, reeling on his feet. He took half a step, and composed himself, and came through the impossible door glowing with unfamiliar magic...

...to the sound of applause?

Jimmy was starting to feel like he was caught in a bad trip. He'd never done anything that could actually cause a bad trip, but he was sure this is what it would feel like. He stopped looking right about there, still trying to shake off the vertigo from earlier.

"You okay?" he heard Dean ask.

_No,_ Jimmy answered, even as Cas said aloud, "I don't have much time."

"What happened?" Sam asked.

"I got out," Cas answered, and Jimmy managed to keep his still slightly groggy addition of, _Fresh and fabric softened,_ to himself.

"From where?" That was Dean.

Not surprisingly, Cas didn't answer. Jimmy wasn't wholly sure if that was a matter of pride or just expediency. "Listen to me: Something is not right. This thing is much more powerful than it should be."

"What thing, the trickster?" Dean asked.

_No, the cleaning lady,_ Jimmy snarked back, peevishly. _Jimmy, please,_ Cas answered, almost overlapping him, and at the same time he said aloud, "If it is a trickster."

Jimmy heard Sam ask something, and he just finally got his slightly scrambled head together enough to look out again when they were thrown through the air and into a wall. This time they groaned in unison, though Jimmy wasn't sure whether they did it aloud or inside their skull. He could feel the ghost of pain across his side, still bruised from their adventures in being living laundry, and--

He didn't even really hear what was going on out there, but he felt Cas freeze, felt the shock like ice water hit the angel, and when Cas got them up, he found himself staring at a not-very-tall man one moment

and perception shifted

and then he was staring at an angel, gold and white and heart-stoppingly beautiful, the next.

Cas's voice rang like a bell in their head, reverberated with so many things that Jimmy couldn't name them all -- shock and hurt and anger and awe and fear and confusion and love--

**_\--Gabriel._ **

"Hi, Castiel!" A faux-cheerful tenor greeted, overlaying a voice that seared across them like a wash of light and sound and power--

\--and then they were alone again.

_Gabriel, Gabriel,_ Cas whispered, reeling all over again.

 

 

 

Gabriel wasn't the first archangel Jimmy had clapped eyes on, and he still felt like he'd just gotten dropkicked in the head. Gabriel was _the_ archangel; Raphael was the healer, Michael was the warrior, but Gabriel was the _messenger_ , he was the one who brought the word, who foretold John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, who spoke to Mary. He was-- he was--

Jimmy had no siblings; he was an only child, and he'd never really felt like he lacked anything by being an only child. He understood sibling relationships as well as a man could who had none, but he couldn't imagine seeing your brother for the first time in thousands of years and being flung around like a rag doll by him--

These two things were related. Jimmy knew they were. He just needed to put them together.

His face hurt.

This, too, was related.

_Cas,_ he tried. _Cas?_

Cas didn't answer him. Jimmy focused their eyes ahead; he could see some through Cas's perspective, but mostly all he saw were bars. Not quite like cell bars. He could feel his face, and it hurt. His side hurt. In fact, almost everything hurt. He felt like, if he wanted to, he could press lightly and topple Cas's control of their shared body, he was that close to the surface. He concentrated, and was nearly knocked back into looping confusion by the realization he could actually feel the faint, phantom existence of awkwardly bent _wings_ at his back, which he'd never felt before because they weren't even his to feel.

Coupled with the fact that Cas wasn't moving to escape whatever confinement they'd been put up in, or even whispering, and this was so many levels of wrong.

It was right around there that he realized Castiel, who he had been with through more than one battle, who he had seen face off with Raphael, who had managed to take blow after blow just to get back up again, was in the angelic equivalent of _shock_.

_Cas, can you hear me? Castiel?_

Nothing. Jimmy couldn't even really feel the bleed-off he got more and more these days of emotion, crossing the increasingly narrow metaphysical aisle between them. He wished they were somewhere safe enough to see if he could drag them into the no-space they could meet in; at least there he could look at the angel. There wasn't even a handy mirror here, which just left Jimmy his voice.

_C'mon, Cas. C'mon, come back,_ he tried to coax, and got just as little response he did last time.

He knew Gabriel had left long ago. Cas never went into it, really; Jimmy had asked because Gabriel was pretty much the first angel anyone thought of when they thought of the Heavenly Host. All Cas had told him was that Gabriel had not been seen since he had announced the birth of the Christ child, and that he hadn't been back to Heaven for a very long time even before that.

Jimmy resisted the urge to steal back control of his body. Cas had been flung around and the last thing he wanted to do was remove even more control from the angel.

Finally, he tried singing, gently, _Castiel, Castiel._

He listened to the echo of his little three-note, six beat song, and for a moment he thought he wouldn't be answered.

He wished that he could brace himself better against the hurt when he was.

_Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty_ , Cas sang back, after a few heartbeats, dragging in a slow breath he didn't need to sing with, and Jimmy felt a jolt of fear for how _fractured_ that voice was, _who was, and is, and is to come._

_There you are,_ Jimmy said, in a rush, wishing he could drag in a few hard breaths of his own. The only word he could possibly use to describe the split harmonics of Cas's voice was 'devastation.' _Stay with me, Cas, okay? Don't go away._

_Where would I go?_ Cas asked, after another long pause. At least now Jimmy could sense him there again, though. Even if what he was sensing was dazed and heartsick and somewhere underneath, quietly simmering anger and hurt. _Jimmy._

_Yeah._ God, this would be so much easier if they were face to face. At this point, Jimmy was sure that even a hug would go a long way. He didn't even know which of them it would do more good for; he was sure he, at least, would feel better for giving it. _I'm here. I'm here. Can you stay with me?_

_I remembered his voice,_ Cas said, his own voice splitting even further, shards cutting Jimmy's heart. _Gabriel. Why? Why?_

Jimmy had absolutely no answer he could ever give to that. _Cas, I'm so sorry,_ he finally said, and he meant it so much it just amplified the ache.

_I am-- you are--_ There were a few more beats. _It is not yours to be sorry for._

_No. But I can be sorry it's doing this to you,_ Jimmy answered, still softly.

Cas didn't answer that, but Jimmy could feel the sluggish, dazed shift in how he was feeling. Restless, even for the shock. Gratitude, for Jimmy. Then back again to heartbreak, but now flavored more for anger. Jimmy wasn't sure if that was better or worse, but it seemed to be burning the shock off, albeit slowly. _I always-- I-- Why this? Did he leave for this, to masquerade as a trickster? Why? He left. Jimmy, he left. At the beginning of the war, he never fought. Our Messenger. He disappeared. He left us._

There was no answer for that, either. Jimmy couldn't even begin to think of one. And despite himself, he thought of Amelia, and Claire, and he thought about devastation given voice. _"Why, why?"_

Did they cry it to him? To God? 

_He is the only one who never went to war. Of all of us._ Cas was putting something together; his voice was less fractured, more harmonic again, though the tone was increasingly dark. But even then, Jimmy could hear the grief, shining across a few thousand years. _He has taken away even my ability to imagine that he chose joy over war,_ Cas said, and towards the end, his voice sharpened, pulled tight like wire, hummed with cracking innocence, _Why? Gabriel. Why?_

 

 

 

Neither of them got an answer.

Cas never tried asking, once Gabriel pulled them back. Jimmy thought maybe he was afraid of the answer. That he was trying to hang onto the last shreds of daydreams he once had, or pride, or composure, or some lingering innocence war and disappointment hadn’t stolen from him. He gathered himself together and forced his shoulders straight, and he matched glares with his older brother, and he never tried asking.

Gabriel never offered answers. Only dismissiveness of Cas's search, and a whole lot of anger at Dean's indictment.

Jimmy wondered if they could see the hurt in each other, because he sure as heck could see it for himself.

Jimmy didn't need an answer. He knew now like he hadn't really let himself know before what his wife and daughter cried to him and God.

He couldn't even imagine what Cas must have looked like, that Dean looked as concerned as he did. Dean, who wasn't known at the best of times for being overly warm or demonstrative, got back out of the Impala and walked back, ducking his head to catch Cas's gaze, and asked, "Hey, man. Cas. You okay? Why don't you come ride with us, hang out for the evening?"

Cas looked down at the fingers curled lightly in the sleeve of his coat, and then back up at Dean, blinking once and breathing. Only Jimmy knew how badly the angel wanted to lean into the offered comfort of Dean's voice, and only Jimmy knew how conflicted that feeling really was.

And because he was just now figuring out that he was the wall at Cas's back, he gave a nudge forward.

_Go with him._

And with a delayed nod, Cas did.


	11. XI.

**XI.**

**2011**

"I've answered to that name," the man said. "Get up, we need to get the Hell outta here."

"He just nearly juiced himself, dude," Ash protested, but he took Jimmy's hand when Jimmy held out his, and helped him up. "You gotta give him--"

"I'm gonna punch you through a _wall_ ," Jimmy snarled, flinging himself at the familiar-faced, winged figure eyeballing him despite the fact that he wasn't exactly sure how he was on his feet.

Gabriel side-stepped it neatly, turning and planting a palm between Jimmy's shoulder blades to shove him into the wall that Jimmy was going to try to punch him through. "Oh, _come on_ , we don't have time for this crap! Look again, you idiot."

"Can't, kinda indisposed," Jimmy shot back, face pressed to the wood-grained wall, teeth locked together.

Gabriel stepped back, flinging his hand up like, _we good?_ Still glaring.

Jimmy turned and put his back to the wall. Everything in him wanted to deck an archangel right now, and he wasn't the least bit intimidated. Not if Gabriel faked his own death, not after what that did to Cas and every single other angel in existence, and--

"--Gabriel's _vessel_ ," he breathed, now that his head was clear enough to make sense of what he was seeing.

Because there _was_ something exceptionally angelic about the man; he had Gabriel's flight wings, and moved with them just as smoothly as any angel did, and he had an angel's eyes, vivid and intent, and he even had a faint glow, like an afterimage of an angel's grace. But Jimmy was looking at a human soul. The gold-gilt edges of the man's flight feathers didn't shine their own light, and when he shifted his perspective to the layer that would show him an angel's nebulous, formless reality, there wasn't really anything there.

Something broken flashed through those gold eyes, and then the man just said, "Gabriel's _Caius_. Now that we're done playing nice, can we _leave_? Because that stunt you pulled, you just caught the attention of some very nasty celestial assholes, and I don't want to--"

"--James Novak."

Both of them spun to find an angel, her dark hair pulled into a bun, standing there looking composed. She smiled, a gentle, distant sort of smile.

"Bar's closed, lady," Ash said, not entirely able to hide just how nervous he was. "Come back during regular business hours, first round's on me."

"I'm afraid I can't," she said, never looking away from Jimmy. She cocked her head to the side slightly, then took a step forward. "My name is Naomi. I see you've done some... interesting things with your heaven. I'd like the chance to talk to you." Then she looked at Caius, offering a slightly more brittle smile at him. "Caius. It's good to see you again."

Everything -- literally everything -- about her set Jimmy's alarms ringing. Not that he had too many good and happy encounters with angels that weren't his, but mostly he was able to remember that they were living things, too, and find some empathy for them even when he knew that they couldn't all be saved. But everything about her made him want to run, and find somewhere to curl up in a ball and hide. On this layer, she kinda looked like that woman from Stargate. But then on another, her grace shone with something _wrong_ , and she was currently carrying her wings nearly hidden, but Jimmy could swear he could see stains on them.

When she stepped forward, he stepped back.

"Can't say the same," Caius spat back, and Jimmy felt the man edge closer to him. "Why don't you tell Jimmy here what your idea of talk is?"

Naomi never blinked, just serenely turned her attention back to Jimmy. "I promise, no harm will come to you. I just want to talk."

Jimmy opened his mouth--

\--and Naomi flared in a flash of light, looking shocked in Jo's direction for half a moment before she was gone.

"What? What the--?!"

"We have to run, all of us, right _now_ ," Caius said, grabbing Jimmy by the arm and dragging him for the door. "Thanks, hot-stuff," he said to Jo, who still had her palm pressed to the glowing, modified banishing sigil. "I suggest you two lay low, find somewhere to hide out, 'cause we two are gonna be on the lam for the rest of eternity."

Jimmy was just trying to keep up, now, and he stared slack-jawed, letting himself be pulled.

"That won't hold her, it only chucked her out of this heaven. She'll be back," Jo said, running for the back; she paused long enough to press a kiss to Jimmy's cheek, looking at him with sad eyes and a clap on the shoulder, and then she was bolting.

Ash grabbed his laptop, and looked around his bar, then offered a shrug. "Stay safe, Angel Whisperer."

Jimmy's voice cracked, and wasn't nearly strong enough, but he answered, "You too, Doctor Badass."

"Enough with the saccharine," Caius ordered, slapping open the front door, and dragging them both out.

 

 

 

If Jimmy thought being able to see the hidden doors and gates and cracks of Heaven was trippy, he realized within seconds that he didn't even know the half of it. The _fraction_ of it.

Jimmy screamed.

He couldn't help it.

"Shut your eyes," Caius ordered, hand still locked around Jimmy's wrist, as they moved. Jimmy slammed his eyes closed, but he still felt queasy, on top of the cold he had been, and everything in him wanted to just _keep screaming_. He didn't, but he could feel it in his chest, bursting to get out the moment he opened his eyes.

All at once, he was nothing and everything; he was his soul's purest form, and its metaphysical representation, and he was even briefly the barely-there fog of Cas's grace that he still had clinging to him like dust, and he was seeing every layer and every color; he was on an escalator, and he was running, and he was flying, and he was expanded to a thin line and compressed to quantum mechanics and finally he was--

\--spitting out dirt.

Jimmy gagged at the ground, but there was no more puking in Heaven than there was crying in Heaven, so it was kind of a futile gesture.

"You got about thirty-three minutes, and then we move again." Caius, unlike Jimmy, sounded perfectly fine.

"What--" Jimmy gasped, pushing himself up and holding himself on shaking arms. "--the _fuck_."

Caius gave the verbal equivalent of an eyeroll, snorting a short laugh. Probably he was actually rolling his eyes (because despite the different name, there didn't seem to be a damn bit of difference between him and Gabriel), but Jimmy didn't care enough to look up to see. Everything spun and he collapsed on his side, panting and staring at the disorienting dance of light and color that wasn't quite focused.

"We hit the expressway." Caius turned and looked around. "Jumped in the tube, hopped on the train, rustled the horses, whatever you call it. The Axis Mundi is the central road through Heaven, right? Well, we jumped on the outer belt at about a gajillion miles an hour."

Jimmy finally got his eyes to focus enough, and realized that he was looking at a carnival. Someone else's heaven. "How?" was about all he could get enough air to ask. Even though he technically didn't need to breathe, his soul sure as heck felt breathless.

"Just did." Caius shrugged, as much with wings as shoulders. "Now, you gonna lay there? 'Cause I could go for some cotton candy or something."

"I'm gonna lay here. Do whatever you want," Jimmy said, after a few more dragged in breaths, letting his head fall back into the dirt.

Caius sneered. "Fine. Oh, and you're _welcome_ , by the way."

And with that, he walked off, passing through the envisioned crowds and into the lights.

Jimmy closed his eyes and tried to figure out what the hell he had just gotten himself into.

 

 

 

The actual sustenance of souls in Heaven wasn't food, or memory, or beauty, it was _rest_. Which made sense, given that it was supposed to be a place of eternal peace. Sleeping was the one thing that Jimmy had found that felt right, in all of it; in his dreams, his own dreams, he could live and breathe again. And he did notice that he could tire himself, especially when he was pulling spellwork that required a lot of effort.

He had never been so tired as he was now, though. Not even towards the very end of the Apocalypse itself; then, it had been Castiel who was the flickering candle and Jimmy was able to play the hearth, keeping them both warm and moving forward to the very end. The wall his angel, worn and beaten and feeling every one of his millions of years of life and thousands of years as a warrior, could lean back against.

In his dazed, barely-conscious state, Jimmy knew Cas would gladly return the favor if he was here. And that was enough to keep him stumbling forward.

But by the time they made it to their fourth stop, he wasn't even really sure he was moving. Every trip into the outer belt was worse. He could sometimes hear Caius snapping irritably at him to suck it up, but aside the once when Jimmy shot him the bird back, he didn't bother responding. Now there was just the sense of motion, his own or someone else's, and occasionally nausea and mostly cold, sickening exhaustion.

Which was why he didn't register the new presence, let alone his surroundings, until it was too late to defend himself.

There was a brush of an angel's grace -- not echoes or memories, not dreaming, but real and present power -- against him, the first time he had felt it since losing Cas, and for a moment he wanted to reach out to it.

Except, despite feeling very similar, it wasn't _Castiel_.

Jimmy felt the all-too familiar surge of sudden anxiety that would accompany an adrenaline rush if he had a body, and scrambled or stumbled or tripped backwards, moving away from the angel in front of him, panting and wide-eyed and shaking and still wishing he could just puke. He vaguely heard Caius say something, and he couldn't believe that Gabriel's vessel, of all beings, would land them in a trap, but--

"Don't be afraid," the angel said, its clear voice cutting easily through the fog in his head, sounding gentle, soothing, even worried. "Don't be afraid, I want to help. Please, please let me help," it said, reaching out again slow, like approaching a wild animal.

It didn't exactly boost Jimmy's confidence, because he knew that they could be torturing you to fractured, bleeding grace and have that same gentle tone. He wasn't about to let any angel get a hand on him that wasn't his own, but he ended up kicking himself right back into a solid form, which immediately wrapped arms and wings around him, and he didn't have a hope of breaking free.

He grit his teeth, squeezed his eyes closed, and felt the brush of angelic fingers across his forehead.

The last thing he registered before sleep claimed him was a sense of innocence, awe-worthy in its mostly intact state, and then he was gone.


	12. XII.

**XII.**

**2009**

"If you could read my mind, love... what a tale my thoughts could tell. Just like an old-time movie, 'bout a ghost from a wishin' well. In a castle dark, or a fortress strong, with chains upon my feet; you know that ghost is me. And I will never be set free, as long as I'm a ghost you can't see..."

The pale grass of the savannah stretched out in front of them, and Jimmy's thoughts were an ocean away, in another hemisphere. He was on the African continent, and all he could think about was what he left in Pontiac, Illinois.

He was only half aware he was even singing, though he became more aware when he felt the attention of the angel fully on him.

Cas was quiet, but Jimmy knew he was listening to every word, every remembered chord in their head. He wished, as he rarely did anymore, that he was alone. It was a selfish thought, one of many selfish thoughts he'd entertained lately. He kept it to himself for that reason alone. Despite their separate misery, their respective family issues, they had been gentle with each other since Gabriel in a way that they hadn't been since before Jesse Turner. But there were just some things he'd rather be alone for, and going through his thoughts and feelings about his family topped that list.

"If I could read your mind, love, what a tale your thoughts could tell; just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell. When you reach the part where the heartaches come, the hero would be me... but heroes often fail. And you won't read that book again, because the ending's just too hard to take."

There was nothing easy or gentle about the process of realizing the depth of your own mistakes, and trying to deal with them.

He could feel Cas wind up to say something; could feel it almost like an internal shift, vaguely edged, and he stopped singing.

Waited, expectantly.

 _I could go,_ Cas said, finally, after Jimmy felt him go through and discard start after start, even if he didn't know the words or thoughts themselves. _If you wish to be alone. For a time?_

He did wish to be alone. But he knew that if he agreed, he would regret it about two minutes later, too. Once he'd latched back onto this comet, there was no real way to let go again. Jimmy was just doing his best to deal with that fact.

He didn't rush an answer. Even so, he hoped that Cas could feel his own gratitude and affection for the offer, even if the offer was potentially dangerous. Because he could feel the reluctance in it, and the selfless determination to see it through anyway.

Instead, for a long moment, he just sat and looked out over the gold grass, and finally let himself really smell it, baked under the sun and smelling sweet. It was the smell of warmth and purity, he thought. It reminded him of Claire, and it made him think of summer, and finally he found what he wanted to say. "I remember, when Claire was little, before she started school, Amelia and I would have to leave her at the baby-sitter’s while we both worked. Except, sometimes one or the other of us would have a day off, and then we'd watch her, save us a little money. I used to take her for ice cream in the summer, and I remember how much of a mess she would make with it. Turns out eating ice cream is a fine art and you don't realize, until you take your own kid, that your parents had to mop chocolate off of your face, and maybe their parents had to, and all the way back."

As he always did when Jimmy brought up his family, Cas fell back silent and still. Jimmy was never sure, exactly, why that stillness reminded him of a trapped wild animal and a little boy at storytime, all at the same time. More of the odd dichotomy that was Castiel, really.

"It's all stuff like that. They hit me out of the blue. You could be in the middle of smiting a demon, and I'm remembering the first time she brought home Goosebumps from the library and how me and Ames had a nice long talk about whether she was old enough for that kind of thing. I never _realized_. I never realized that I could walk away from that. Know what I mean? I never realized that I could walk away from it, because I couldn't. Except, that's what I did." Jimmy stared off into the horizon, past the horizon. "How do I live with that? How can I ever be _forgiven_ for that?"

He didn't actually mean for the question to be answered, but surprisingly, Cas tried. _It wasn't your fault. If anyone's, it was mine. Jimmy, you've done nothing that requires forgiveness._

Jimmy's eyebrows went up. Partly for the flare of protectiveness he could feel off of Cas, but also because the angel was so off the mark. "I walked out on my family. You told me that you'd require me for some time, Cas, and even if I didn't know what all the time away would entail, I knew it would take me away from them, and I said yes anyway."

_But you thought you were doing the right thing. You were acting in good faith, on your conscience._

"Yeah, of course I was," Jimmy said, frowning a little at the quiet desperation he could hear in Cas's voice. "That doesn't make what I did right, necessarily. It doesn't mean I didn't hurt them. Thoughtlessly, even."

There was another long pause while Cas tried to work his mind around it; Jimmy could feel it almost like a scramble. Light in a mirrored box. And again, he went to start half a dozen times in about a split second, before coming out with, _I could take you back. Find another, who-- who would be willing--_

"Whoa, hold on. Wait." That was about the last thing Jimmy expected to hear. "Cas, do you think I want to go home right now?"

 _Yes?_ Cas answered, going from kind of frantic to abjectly confused.

"No." Jimmy sighed, dropping his face into his hand, feeling a jolt of adrenaline at the idea. "Well, yeah, part of me wants to go home, curl up with Ames, hold my Bug, forget all about the fact that the world's going to come to an end. Just like part of you wishes it could be in Heaven right now, doesn't it?"

There wasn't an immediate answer, but eventually Cas said, _Yes._

"Okay, and what's the problem with both of those scenarios?"

_I've rebelled, returning to Heaven would likely mean my death. But I don't see why you couldn't, if you wanted to; finding another vessel would be difficult, particularly as telling them the unvarnished truth about my mission wouldn't be easy, but if you wished it, I would see to it._

Jimmy rubbed at his forehead, half-absently, turning most of his attention inwards. "I walked out of their lives once, got coerced out of mine the second time, and gave you my life the third time when I could have taken yours and walked off." More gently, because he could feel the sharp edge of guilt and shame on the other side of their narrow aisle, he added, "I'm not leaving you. The part of me that wants to go home is the part of me that wants to think that it'll all magically turn out okay. The part of me that's here is the rest of me, and that part knows that it's not going to be okay without us on the front lines fighting for it. That you need me. That I need to do this. That in the real world, even if I went home now, it wouldn’t be okay. I might never be forgiven by them, but I love them, and if I lose them while helping to save the world, then I still made the best decision that I could make. Understand?"

He could all but feel Cas trying to catch a breath, and still end up inhaling water. _No,_ he finally said, a little helplessly.

"What's the sticking point?"

 _Everything,_ Cas answered, bluntly, frustration creeping in. _How can they blame you, now that they know why? How can you blame yourself, and yet not want to do something to make it right? How can you live with it, if they never forgive you? How can you not want your life back, when it causes you pain to be here?_

Jimmy raised his head from his hand, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "This isn't just about me and my life, is it?"

The silence was all the answer he really needed.

"That's love. That's love -- that's how they can blame me, because they loved me and I hurt them, regardless of cause; they trusted me, and I broke it. It wouldn't matter if a stranger on the street disappeared, it mattered because _I_ disappeared. I love them and I hurt them, regardless of reason, because I didn't think nearly hard enough about it." Jimmy shook his head. "I can live with it because I have to live with it, Cas. Because it's not your job or my job to give me forgiveness on their behalf. They'll give it on their own time, or they won't, and that's their right and me running back home in the middle of the end of the world won't guarantee I'll ever get it, and it might just hurt them worse."

He could feel Cas trying to put all of that together. And he could feel Cas failing utterly, still, in getting it. _I don't understand,_ he finally said, honestly, maybe a little tiredly.

"I know. It's okay." Jimmy finally picked them up off the ground, stretching and feeling the sun, and smelling the grass for another moment. "We'll work on it. You know I'm not leaving you, right?"

 _I know,_ Cas said, at some length, though cautiously. _I don't know why._

Jimmy just smiled a little, warm and fond, and was heartened by those feelings being reflected back at him. "We'll work on that, too."

 

 

 

While Cas was doing shots with Ellen and Jo, some several days later, Jimmy did two things.

The first was lament that they couldn't get at least buzzed, given that they were going to try to take out Lucifer the next day. He was unafraid. He didn't even know why; rightfully, he should have been terrified. But they had been in so many fights, he was just... not. Not afraid, not really anything but ready. He felt oddly content with the idea that if they died, they would go out together.

It never occurred to him, ever after that moment, to imagine any other scenario.

The second thing he did was tease Cas for looking at Ellen with an edge of actual, factual infatuation.

_’Celia, you're breakin' my heart! You're shakin' my confidence daily! Whoa, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees, I'm beggin' you please to come home...!_

Cas sounded incredulous when he asked, even as Ellen was pouring them another round, _Are you calling me unfaithful?_

Jimmy just cracked up. Okay, so maybe they were a little buzzed.

 

 

 

When Cas decided he wanted to ride with Ellen and Jo all the way to Carthage, Jimmy wailed the rest of the song at the top of his mental lungs. The response was exasperated, and Cas refused to sing harmony even in their head, but Jimmy could still feel the angel take the ribbing in the spirit it was meant in. Mental eyeroll back included.

It was a good moment. Camaraderie, all around. Much needed camaraderie.

And despite poking Cas about it, it pleased Jimmy to all get-out that Cas was making some human friends outside of Dean and Sam. Angels weren't made to be alone, and even though Cas never really was, there was a big difference between having one lone human soul as a constant companion, and the entire Heavenly Host around you. Jimmy knew better than anyone just how hard the isolation was; from Cas's garrison-mates, from even having another angelic ally.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, he also knew better than anyone how hard Cas took losing those two new friends, too.

 

 

 

 _How?_ Cas asked Jimmy, a week later, standing across from the street from where the cleanup was going on, looking at the remains of the hardware store where his friends died in a moment of incendiary defiance.

They had spent the past week with Castiel going over every single misstep he made, a tactician’s clinical self-critique, and Jimmy offering him only a patient ear. The actual technical mistakes were easy enough to find, and objectively it was wise to go over them. But it wasn’t just wisdom that drove that relentless self-examination, which culminated in this moment, this one word question.

Jimmy thought about it, carefully. Not because he wasn’t eventually expecting the question, so much, but because he was still trying to figure out his own answers to it all.

And he knew it was about guilt, and he knew it was about forgiveness, and he knew it was about love, and he knew it was about pain. He knew it was about Dean's anger, and everyone's grief, and all of the 'could haves' and 'should haves,' and most importantly, he knew that it was not just about Ellen and Jo, but also every angel who had fallen to Cas's blade, and every one that would in the future.

It was about all of the things Cas didn’t understand, and all of the things Jimmy wasn’t ready to forgive himself for, and he wasn't sure there was any answer he could ever give that would be good enough.

 _I don't know,_ he finally answered, honestly. _I don't know how. Except that we keep going._

 

 

 

And so that's what they did. Searched for God. Helped the Winchesters. Ran. Flew. Fought. 

Pushed and pulled and dragged each other through the pain, into the resolve on the other side.

 _In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade,_ Cas sang, fiercely, _and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him 'til he cried out, in his anger and his shame, 'I am leaving, I am leaving,' but the fighter still remains._

Jimmy reached up and pressed his hand to Cas's through the mirror's glass, a raw moment of defiance and warmth and determination between them.

 _Yeah,_ he said. _He does._


	13. XIII.

**XIII.**

**2011**

"So, then the winged man dragged our hapless hero through the door, into a great swirling mess of confusion and color," Jimmy read, or thought he read, or felt he read. The story seemed oddly familiar, but for the moment he couldn't really place it, or who the winged man was, or who the hapless hero was.

"What happens next, Daddy?" Claire asked, knees drawn up, Sal the Bear propped up beside her. Her night light cast an image of space on her ceiling in blue, and the bedside lamp glowed warm yellow. It was a scene that had played out all through her childhood, and for some reason, it made him feel almost desperately wistful right now.

Jimmy looked down at the book again. "I'm not..."

"How does it end?" Claire asked; he could hear her bed springs creak as she bounced in place.

"I don't know," Jimmy said, softly, turning the page, trying to find where the words had gone. But they weren't there.

"How does it end?" Claire asked again.

He finally looked up, then startled back in the chair. Sitting next to his six-year-old daughter was a little boy, mirroring her pose.

"Who...?" Jimmy asked, blinking.

"He watches over the children," Claire said, without looking over. She bounced again. "How does it end, Daddy?"

"I don't..." Jimmy took a breath, feeling a creep of panic, and looked down at the book again.

"Can I help?" the little boy asked, "I won't hurt you. I promise. It's--"

 

 

 

"--it's okay."

Jimmy's eyes snapped open and he found himself wrapped in feathers and grace, with a pair of soft, glowing eyes looking down at him sweetly, like this wasn't the most terrifying thing in the universe, to find himself being held by an angel when he was just on the lam from them.

"I'm a friend, I promise!" the angel pleaded, voice high and clear.

Jimmy gave up struggling after a moment, but he couldn't quite quit trembling, which was both annoying and embarrassing. "Who _are_ you?" he finally managed to ask, wrapping his arms around himself.

"Samandiriel. My name is Samandiriel," the angel answered, petting at Jimmy's arm like he was a spooked cat. "I've been helping Caius. You're Jimmy Novak; Castiel's vessel. I was made at the same time he was."

Jimmy felt the oddest urge to pull what Caius did and answer, 'Cas's Jimmy,' because it was a better truth than vessel, honestly. Just like he didn't feel the least bit bizarre in referring to Cas as _his_ angel. It just was. But, still a little disoriented and dazed, he just let it go for a moment, looking closer at Samandiriel. That-- actually made a lot of sense. They looked and even felt alike, in a lot of ways; golds and blues, though Samandiriel was more blues. Silverlight edged wings. His voice wasn't quite as layered, rang higher and the word 'sweet' kept coming to mind, but Jimmy wasn't actually sure what that meant.

Compared to Cas, Samandiriel looked almost pristine; relatively unscarred, only wearing a few, and wings silver-white instead of various silver-grays. For a moment, Jimmy wondered if this was what his angel would have looked like, had he not spent so much time with a sword or under one.

"I'm okay," he finally said, carefully disengaging himself from the unabashed tenderness Samandiriel was giving him, moving back and trying to get his bearings.

Whatever heaven this was, it was in the woods. Sometime in the fall, by the looks of it; maybe in the mountains, given the slope. He could see Caius through the trees, standing on an outcropping of rock, peering around like a bird of prey. Keeping watch.

Jimmy shivered briefly, but he did feel warmer. "Thanks," he finally said, offering the best smile he could manage. "I'm sorry about the overreaction. I haven't been that near an angel since... since."

"It's all right," Samandiriel answered, smiling back. Then his face got more serious, and for a moment, Jimmy was put less in mind of a kid and more in mind of the fact that despite the 'sweet,’ he was still talking to someone who had been around since well before the dawn of mankind. "No one walks away from a war without scars," he said. "Not my brother, nor you."

"Nor you," Jimmy echoed.

"Nor me, though I’ve seen less war than most," Samandiriel said, smiling again, this time in commiseration. "I can't stay all of the time, but I can help. I don't agree with what Naomi is doing to consolidate her power; there are too many factions, but there's something wrong with my brothers and sisters who sided with her." He narrowed his eyes, in an almost human expression of consternation. "I don't know what. It worries me, though."

"It should," Caius said, coming back in a crunch of leaves and wearing a scowl. "She kept me locked up for weeks, until I discovered that these--" He arched his wings. "--weren't just good for me not being able to walk around without them."

"What’s with that, anyway?" Jimmy couldn't resist asking, gesturing to them. "You're a human soul with an archangel's wings?"

"I spent upwards of three _thousand_ years with Gabriel," Caius said back, with a casualness that Jimmy could see right through. "You have wings at your back for that long and try living without 'em. Turns out that they come in handy, though. Watch."

Gold and red leaves gusted when Caius gave one hard beat of those wings, and the next thing Jimmy knew, he was standing a few hundred yards away, across the ravine and higher on the slope. Nothing like an angel's ability to fly. But definitely not bad.

Samandiriel looked oddly amused, ducking his head to smile down at the ground. _Sotto voce_ , he commented aside to Jimmy, though his voice was layered fondness and sorrow, "He's very like Gabriel. Including showing off."

Jimmy felt the first laugh in far too long sneak up on him, and chewed it down only through a force of will, as Caius started back in their direction. "I noticed. Cas and I weren't really much like each other at all, comparatively."

"Unless you're talking about how terrific that was, no whispering in the back of the classroom, kiddies!" Caius yelled, making up the distance easily at a steady, sure-footed, side-hilled jog.

" _Very_ like Gabriel." Samandiriel reached over and gave that half-pet, half-pat to Jimmy's back. "You and Castiel aren't so different. You're both very brave. And determined."

There was something about that statement that was decidedly layered. A compliment, and a genuine one. But a little bit of a-- warning, or sadness, too. And really, Jimmy couldn't disagree. He didn't necessarily think of himself as _brave_ , maybe more desperate, but determination he had in spades. Then again, that could be desperation of its own kind, too. It certainly had been for Cas, often enough.

"Thanks." Jimmy took a breath and finally asked the question he wasn't sure he wanted an answer to. "Has anyone heard anything from him?"

Samandiriel shook his head, with a small, solemn frown. "No. His garrison was wiped out by Leviathan; I've heard that Inias may have escaped, but no one knows for sure. Hester had found him, but was killed. No one knows why. I-- many suspect Castiel of the deed, but even when he was-- not himself--" Samandiriel shook his head again, leaving it at that and just finishing with, "I have faith that it wasn't him."

"He wasn't back there, was he?" Jimmy asked, trying to shove the cold clutch of fear down. "His garrison?"

"No. No one knows where he is. Many are searching for him, though."

"Yeah, it turns out it's kind of rude to wipe out the last living archangel not locked in a cage, and every other seraph in existence, then run out and leave this place to be run by the mooks." Caius came back to their little circle and jerked his head towards Samandiriel, smirking broadly. "Present company excluded, of course. Mostly."

Samandiriel didn't bother to dignify that with a reply, rising to stand smoothly. "We should move on."

"Quick question: Where are we even going?" Jimmy asked, wincing internally if not externally at the idea of getting back into whatever nausea-inducing madhouse roller coaster it was that was the outer belt.

"Right now? Anywhere to stay ahead of the Heavenly Inquisition," Caius said, reaching out to give Samandiriel's head an affectionate shove even as he addressed Jimmy. "Now that you're awake again, Sleepy Dwarf, we can make other plans."

It was such a big brotherly move that it made Jimmy's heart ache. So did the look of half-adoration and half-annoyance that Samandiriel gave back to Caius. Even so, he snorted at Caius. "Who are you calling dwarf?" he asked, drawing himself up to his full height.

Caius just shot him a cheeky grin right back and waved one of his wings, which went higher than both of their heads.

"Here," Samandiriel said, voice amused, offering his hands out to Jimmy. "I'll help, you won't feel so bad this time."

 

 

 

It was a lot easier to travel with an angel than an angel wannabe, it turned out. Jimmy still felt kind of queasy, but nothing like he had before; Samandiriel kept him close and sheltered beneath a wing like a fledgling bird, which was mildly awkward and not exactly good for his self-esteem, but then again, there wasn't exactly much use for things like pride when you were on the lam in _eternal paradise_ , so he got over it pretty quick.

"Ash said there were traces; that was how I was able to dream walk Dean. Because he'd been here already," he said, as soon as he had his breath and his stomach under control. This heaven was apparently the home of a sports fan; Caius was already peeling off in the direction of a concession stand, while the Brooklyn Dodgers (who hadn't been in Brooklyn in how long?) were playing on the field below. "Could they be tracking us?"

Samandiriel watched the game with his head cocked, looking fascinated. "Not easily," he answered, without looking away from the game. "Our numbers aren't infinite, and nearly everyone is dedicated to finding the tablets and the Prophet."

"But still, that's how?" Jimmy asked, trying not to find the view of his glowing companion watching baseball intently to be adorable. And, admittedly, failing. "Is there any way to cover those tracks?"

"Not that we know of." Samandiriel finally dragged his attention away from the game and gave an apologetic smile to Jimmy, though Jimmy didn't know if it was for not having a better answer, or for getting caught up watching. "Caius has been on the run since Raphael was killed; Raphael had been protecting him for love of Gabriel. I suspect for missing Gabriel, as well. Raphael was always the quietest archangel, and made attachments carefully, but those he made ran very deep."

Jimmy winced.

"Oh. Oh, no." Samandiriel shook his head, eyes widening slightly. "I'm not-- I'm not judging Castiel. Even if I were inclined to, Raphael had killed him once; he was declared a traitor and Raphael told the entire Host that he had dealt with the problem. He was quite surprised when Castiel reappeared. I will miss Raphael, but he was... not right, either. He hadn't been in a long time."

"An eye for an eye?" Jimmy asked, just-- staring. A little flabbergasted, to be honest. That this sweet, rather _unwarlike_ angel could have such a cut-throat opinion.

Samandiriel gave something of a half-nod.

"And the rest?"

"It was war."

"The war was over," Jimmy said, and wondered a little why he was even arguing this. Because he didn't exactly like pitting himself opposite of Cas, but couldn't help but feel this actually needed argued. "Hadn't they surrendered?"

Samandiriel shook his head. "Not really; he never gave them a chance to." He gave Jimmy a little smile that was almost sheepish. "I'm not saying any of this right, am I? What I mean is, he meant well. He meant to do the right thing. He meant to save Earth and Heaven from yet more war, and to do that, he felt he had no choice but to wage this one last war. So, he waged it well and to win, as any angel would have; he did nothing that Michael would not have done himself, in wiping out the opposing army at victory. Nothing that Raphael would not have done. If I judge him, am I to judge them?"

It made sense. In its own brutal, black-and-white, angelic way. Jimmy still didn't like that answer, but then again...

"There's one way that Castiel differed, in his approach," Samandiriel said, looking off, this time well past the ball field. "He asked me to join him. I refused. He must have been desperately in need of allies, but he only told me to stay safe. With Michael, I would have had no choice. With Raphael, I was considered too inexperienced to be of use. After the war, he wiped out Raphael's army, but not anyone who refused to fight for him, and this even after he was clearly no longer in his right mind."

"I don't think he was in his right mind before that, honestly." Though, now that he had another piece of the story, it helped. Jimmy still didn’t condone mass slaughter, or for that matter, some of the truly gut-wrenching actions Cas had taken leading up to it. But from an angelic perspective, from a purely strategic perspective?

Jimmy shook his head, letting go of the thought for now. He’d been over this ground many times before. He could offer no absolution but his own for himself. And he still didn’t regret giving that. “In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”

"Maybe not," Samandiriel allowed. "His heart was in the right place, though. It's easy to get lost in the fog of war."


	14. XIV.

**XIV.**

**1978**

Castiel played the strings of time like a professional musician; found the right chords to pluck, unerringly if reluctantly, and Jimmy was so damned impressed by the artistry of that particular composition, measured in the tempo of wingbeats, that for a moment he felt like he was doing the flying himself.

Of course, since it was a practically suicidal jump to follow Anna back to 1978 carrying two passengers, it ended in heat and pain and Jimmy slamming into the brick wall of unconsciousness faster than the speed of light, but for that immeasurable moment between when they left 2010 and when they arrived in 1978, he felt like he had been to Woodstock in more ways than one, and thought maybe that wasn't the worst way to go out of the game.

Then there was nothing.

 

 

 

Jimmy measured their lives less by days and months and more by how they were feeling, towards both the outside world and towards one another. Now, in the space after Ellen and Jo, was the time when they had passed the mark of exhaustion and disenchantment and into the space of professional soldiers, sharing a foxhole and feeding each other's resolve. They developed a language near completely their own; traditions and sentence fragments and unspoken implications and snippets of song lyrics, and understood one another without much effort. The flow of physical, mental and emotional clarified, and while Jimmy still felt wholly individual, and knew Cas was still wholly individual, they had hit such a rhythm that they could just as easily function as one.

It wasn't an instant change, but it was fluid, as though some dam which they had been slowly dismantling between them finally gave way, battered down by one too many losses and one too many shared thoughts and one too many duets sang. He wasn't sure, even, when exactly it happened.

Jimmy had never felt quite so clear-headed in his life.

He didn't hesitate now to speak up, and he didn't hesitate to take back control of his hands or more when he felt like it. Cas, for his part, let him; they had managed to build enough trust to replace that dam that the angel didn't hesitate to let Jimmy have whatever control he sought. It didn't even feel strange to command parts of himself while Cas controlled the rest; Jimmy thought nothing of crossing their arms or rubbing their hands together, seamlessly blending the motion with Castiel's stance or words or expressions. Cas always did the fighting and talking, Jimmy always did the little self-comforting and more practical human stuff, and they both did the seeking and surviving.

That wasn't to say they always agreed on everything. But they didn't fight, they just disagreed and then one or the other would defer.

Jimmy didn't agree that taking Sam and Dean back to '78 was a good idea, but he didn't make any move to stop Cas, either. Cas did it for Dean's plea only, which was something Jimmy always knew was going to be a foregone conclusion, but he'd at least spoken his objections beforehand and Cas had spoken his own as well, to Dean. It was poor tactics, and both of them knew it; it was going to happen to the best of their abilities and maybe at the cost of their lives, and they both knew that, too.

The easy sympatico didn't remove all of their occasional mental push and pull; Jimmy still tried as hard as ever to teach Cas how to function on levels that were more gray-scale than the very angelic black-and-white. Cas still failed to get a lot of it through no fault of his own, and dug in his heels on other things, which was just plain obstinance. Jimmy kind of delighted in that defiance even while he was being exasperated. And he knew Cas kind of delighted in Jimmy _being_ exasperated.

Sometimes they were more gentle with each other’s feelings and thoughts, sometimes less, sometimes downright businesslike. They sang, they debated, they talked softly. Jimmy prodded at Cas's old wounds and sometimes outright dug into them, and for as many times as Cas would bristle and even snap at him, he never actually lashed out back. Jimmy, in turn, confessed to his own and didn't shove away the quiet, protective angel that listened attentively.

They lived on determination and willpower, and the more his strength was fading, the more Cas flung them into the sky, narrowing Jimmy's blue eyes on blue skies and refusing to bend to gravity.

And the more Cas flew, purity of purpose and unrelenting, the more Jimmy steeled himself to be there to catch Cas when gravity finally won.

 

 

 

Jimmy woke up to _shattering_.

He was on his feet before he knew which one of them had put him there, and then he was on his knees on broken glass, gripping his head from the pain, teeth locked together; he could taste blood and feel it running over his lip from his nose, and he could smell smoke, and everything was sound and fury.

Castiel was _screaming_.

It was a spine-freezing noise, piercing, unrelenting; it was _pain_ and _terror_ and _betrayal_ and Jimmy had Cas's blade in hand, not even sure who put it there or when, lashing out blindly with it against an invisible foe, every single instinct driving him to do whatever it took to make it _stop_ , to defend them against whatever it was attacking, gasping desperately to get air into his chest when his lungs felt like they had been through a shredder. In one moment he was in control and then he wasn't and then he was again, and he could feel the panicked flail of wings at his back, but they were uncoordinated, off-beat, and he forced his eyes open to find an absolutely devastated hotel room--

_\--Cas. Castiel! **Cas!**_

The furious, mind-searing noise stopped abruptly, and control flickered back and forth again between them, whole body and anything but fluid, before they were both just kneeling there, bleeding and wide-eyed and shaking.

Jimmy hadn't felt fear like that in a long time. He gasped in breath after breath, or Cas did, he wasn't sure. Maybe they both were, too terrorized to be bothered about which one was dealing with the technical aspects.

Distantly, the fire siren started wailing.

_Cas?_

He felt Cas shift, push them to a crouch; Jimmy felt the ragged ache in their chest, each breath hurting, and tried to make any kind of sense of what was going on. Cas didn't answer him, and Jimmy could finally make out the shift from blind panic to disorientation, and then slowly, awareness.

Which was when he realized that Cas hadn't been _here_ and _now_ this whole time.

They needed to get out of here; fire sirens and police sirens were going to be drawing up outside, and while they weren't on the first floor of wherever the heck they were, they were still in danger of being spotted. Jimmy took willful control of their breathing at that point, slowing it down, and was a bit relieved when Cas didn't fight him over it.

 _Jimmy,_ Cas finally said; only heartbeats later, but it felt like it took forever. His voice was thin, and unnervingly shaky, but at least he was properly here now.

 _We have to move; can you?_ Jimmy asked, keeping his own voice on the softer side. Cas didn't need to have it pointed out that their situation was urgent; almost before Jimmy got to the question mark, he was reaching out to grab their coat off of the chair it had been slung on, and only a moment later, he flew them out of there.

The world outside was gray; rain poured down, and automatically, Cas arched one wing up to cover their head, though it took him another half a minute of getting rained on to realize he needed to align it more into the right layers of reality to do any good. Jimmy took the time before he did to get the overcoat back on them, straightening the lapels slightly. He could feel Cas still shaking, intermittently, and he wasn't quite over his own shivers; they didn't get cold, not really, but the coat still made the world feel a little safer.

He took a moment to look around, reaching up to wipe the blood off of their face, and took in their surroundings; trees, a river. New green leaves; the kind of green that comes before summer really hits, and the river yet more grays. Quiet, at least, though. The air was a little chilly, but didn't really feel uncomfortable.

Jimmy could still feel the headache, though it had backed off a little bit. _I'm kind of amazed we're alive_.

Cas nodded, and Jimmy sensed the careful, meticulous way the angel was trying to pick up all of the pieces and slot them back into the right order. _We're still in Lawrence. We need to find Dean and Sam._

_Do you know where they would be?_

_Yes, I do._ Cas drew in a deep breath, slow and gingerly, and flicked his wing out, water drops flying off of invisible feathers in an arc.

Jimmy went to tell him to wait; to see if he could figure out what it was that had caused the destruction of a hotel room, to see if he could do some kind of good and work past the dazed feeling Cas was radiating. But then he stopped himself.

Dean and Sam first; Anna, if they had to. They could work out the rest later.

 

 

 

Later turned out to not actually be much later.

Dean and Sam were gone. Anna was gone. John and Mary Winchester lived. Michael had been here; presumably, Michael had sent the younger Winchesters back to their own time.

They were stranded over three decades away.

There was no reason to stay in Lawrence. Cas was too battered to get far, but he at least flew them somewhere where the sun was shining, which just happened to be in the middle of a fallow field in someplace Iowa. He alighted them a little hard and a little ruffled, and without waiting for Jimmy to decide to do it himself, folded into the grass to catch his breath.

 _Lot warmer than it is in 2010,_ Jimmy said, looking out, though he left where and how to Cas.

 _Spring, rather than winter,_ Cas answered, reaching up to rub at their forehead. _I don't know how we're going to get back_.

Jimmy frowned, mentally. _How long would you need to rest?_

Cas shook his head. _It isn't rest, it's power; it's finite. The damage will heal, but the power is expended. I could attempt to reach Heaven, but I don't know that I'd make it, and I certainly don't think that I'd be able to explain myself, given that I'm currently stationed and under orders in this time._

_And they'll know you're cut off?_

Cas just nodded, spreading sore wings out and shifting them into the right layers to catch the sunlight and cast a shadow.

Well. Jimmy didn't really feel like reliving the 80s, 90s and 2000s, though if he had to, he supposed they could. The prospect made him wince internally, though; the urge to change things, despite having a little more angelic perspective than most humans, would be overpowering at times.

 _I'm sorry,_ Cas said, at length, in response to the wince.

 _Don't be. I could have vetoed this plan, and I didn't. It's okay, we'll just have to figure out some way of getting back._ Jimmy huffed out a quiet breath, taking back control to lean them back and stare up at the blue sky; Cas shifted his wings a few layers further away so they could lay flat without being uncomfortable. _Could we track Gabriel down? In this time?_

 _Unlikely._ Cas's voice was a little stiff and edged, though Jimmy didn't take it personally. Dean and Sam had given them everything Gabriel had said to them, and while it had eased some of the heartbreak Cas felt over the whole thing -- Gabriel's reasons for leaving -- it hadn't taken it away. It was such a faceted, nuanced feeling; it was little wonder the angel struggled with it so hard.

Even if, to Jimmy, it was all perfectly _natural_ to feel.

There were some things Jimmy wasn't sure he could teach, and the contradictory and complex natures of love and pain, of forgiveness and betrayal, and how all of these could exist at the same time was up there. But he kept trying anyway. The longer he spent with Cas, the longer he spent digging around in the angel's psyche, the more he was starting to realize that someone had failed Castiel along the way, big time. He was a thinking, feeling being; as long as Jimmy had known him, he had _always_ been a thinking, feeling being, though he had kept all of that close and guarded and still did sometimes.

But apparently, no one ever taught him how to detangle those things when they got mixed up and twisted around and doubled back and knotted up.

 _All right,_ Jimmy said, resting one hand on their chest and one arm behind their head, watching clouds and thinking. _Any alternative power sources? Like... I dunno, like the cell phone charger? Something to plug into._

Cas huffed a chuckle. _I am not a cell phone._

 _Sticking a finger in a light socket won't work?_ Jimmy asked, teasing.

_No._

_Can't say I'm disappointed. My hair's already messy enough as is._ Something was tickling at the back of Jimmy's mind, half-formed, but he couldn't seem to really grab it. Still had a headache, but breathing was coming easier now; he could feel Cas slowly repairing the damage. Measuring, it seemed, every action right now. Healing their own form was fairly easy, though, at least.

 _Mm,_ the angel hummed back, half-absently.

Jimmy rubbed the back of their head against the arm he was resting against; the pressure felt good. _What happened back there?_ he asked, and he could feel Cas tense up immediately. Anxiety, not anger; Jimmy had become an expert at reading his constant companion.

 _I don't know,_ Cas said, after a few moments. _I don't remember. It wasn't--_ his trip being torn back to Heaven; Jimmy knew what it felt like when Cas thought about that-- _I don't know. I-- it was--_ He sighed, both aloud and in their head. _I'm sorry. I can't remember._

Which was no small thing for an angel; they had perfect memories. Not being able to remember something that made one scream was a pretty scary prospect; even keeping himself as calm as possible, Jimmy still felt a jolt of his own anxiety at the thought. _Could it have been an attack?_

 _No,_ Cas answered, immediately. _Not one that was happening in the present. Perhaps an old one. But I remember my battles; I remember my wounds, as well. I can't--_ A beat. _I can't recall ever screaming before, aside... and it wasn't that._

This was yet another time where Jimmy wished they could just look at one another. Good as he was at reading the near constant stream of thought and emotion between them, nothing really replaced the ability to look someone in the face. But after a few moments, and knowing he'd probably end up pressing on this again later, he let it go and jumped back to the prior discussion. _What if I did it? I mean, if we're going to play with the battery metaphor, you've technically got two. Your grace and my soul._

 _You couldn't,_ Cas said, frankly, the mental equivalent of a headshake. _Even if you were able to control my wings, the timestream is difficult to navigate, even for an angel._

Jimmy furrowed their eyebrows, not really seeing the sky anymore. _Well, what if you plugged into my power, and did the flying using it?_

There was a long, thoughtful pause. _I'm not sure that's even possible. Our energies aren't the same._

 _Yeah, but they must be compatible. I mean, we're in the same body and we're not cancelling each other out or blowing up or anything, right?_ The longer Jimmy considered it, the more sensible it became. _Plus, I don't have to worry about being cut off from Heaven. I'm a self-contained battery._

 _Self-contained and rechargeable, unlike me,_ Cas added, apparently willing to go with the metaphor now and give it consideration. _I've never heard of such a thing being attempted before, though; using the power of a human soul. I wouldn't even know how._

Jimmy shrugged. _Well, we've got plenty of time to figure it out, don't we?_

 

 

 

Thus began a long few weeks.

Spells were cast, theories were tested, mistakes were made and oddly, Jimmy found it to be a great respite. No worrying themselves to pieces over Dean and Sam, no relentlessly seeking God (though Cas still kept them open to the possibility of finding God here), no dodging archangels and Zachariah's foot soldiers. They were whole unto themselves, brainstorming and bouncing ideas back and forth, relaxing when they weren’t, and once Cas had healed them, flying. Even if they were limited on distance.

Jimmy taught Cas about a dozen new songs and sang Harry Chapin's Mr. Tanner no less than eight times, just because he loved the way they sounded together; him singing the story, Cas singing the background. They hit favorites they'd already had, too, and he found out that Cas didn't so much care for Warren Zevon, but was willing to give The Doors a try, which Jimmy suspected had something to do with Dean. Not Jimmy's thing as much, but he went along with it.

Probably the best moment was actually startling Cas into a laugh, which Jimmy had never heard before, by wailing out Aretha Franklin's Respect in cracked falsetto ( _That is definitely not the right register_.) while stargazing somewhere in the Jefferson National Forest in the wee hours of the morning.

It turned out that, in the end, it was easier than either of them thought for an angel to tap into the power of a human's soul. That after all of that brainstorming, it wasn't really hard at all.

It also turned out that it was terrifying, dangerous and probably going to be painful as Hell. They just had to rip a literal piece of Jimmy's soul away from him for Cas to absorb, if he could, into his own grace. It had been something of an accidental discovery, while they were playing with an energy stealing spell; while the boost had been small and temporary, it had put them on the right course.

Cas's voices and expression were resolute, and he acted every bit the captain and soldier, but his fear was given away by the fact he wouldn't quit shaking his head, almost compulsively. "No."

"This is how we get home," Jimmy said, calmly, just watching the angel cling to denial.

This was a conversation he was glad they were having in their no-space, that headspace between them, because he had a feeling that it'd never work if they were just voices. Jimmy was getting good at pressing his point, and when they had to look at each other, that’s when he usually got his point across best.

"I will not," Cas answered, wings ruffled. "I _will not_ be the one to cause you pain."

"Oh, Cas." Jimmy breathed out slow, not really surprised by his own affection in that moment. "I'm volunteering. We need to get back there, we need to save the world. You've done your part, now let me do mine."

Cas stared at him, incredulously. "You've given your _life_ to this already."

Jimmy stared back. "So have you."

"I'm-- this is--" Cas pressed his lips together and looked off, that look of consternation that looked just as natural on him now as it did on the man he learned it from, and huffed out a frustrated breath. Sometimes, Jimmy marvelled at just how much influence he'd had on this ancient creature.

And sometimes, he marvelled at just how stubborn and thick-skulled Cas was, too.

This was one of those times.

Jimmy sighed, dropped his head, then stepped over and got Cas first by the shoulders, then startled the heck out of him by taking his face in both hands next, staring into that ethereal version of his own eyes. "No. And no. You're not hurting me. If this is painful, it's painful, but it's not you looking to hurt me, and it is me volunteering, with my entire, whole and complete consent, because we're on a mission and this is how we get back to it. Because you need me. Because I need _you_." He softened his tone a little, then, and added, "We're in this together, right?"

He could see Cas's resolve breaking in light of his own, and since Cas couldn't turn his head and look elsewhere, he closed his eyes. "Of course, but Jimmy--"

"No. I recharge you, you get us home." Jimmy laced his fingers together at the back of Cas's head and drew their foreheads together, closing his own eyes, relieved just to be able to do this simple thing. "No apologies, no guilt."

"I don't want to hurt you," the angel finally admitted, just above a whisper; rough in his version of Jimmy's voice, achingly regretful in his own voice.

Jimmy ground their foreheads together briefly, emphatically. "You're not. Pain is just pain. I can live with that. You're not going to hurt me in any way that matters, I promise."

He felt Cas reach up and grip his shirt, then press his palm flat over Jimmy's heart. And finally, radiating reluctance, Cas nodded.

 

 

 

It turned out that yes, it really was exceptionally painful. And it turned out that no, it didn't hurt in any way that mattered.

Jimmy floated back to awareness wrapped in feathers and grace, feeling drained and cold and sore as hell, but still intact. He drifted there for a few moments, trying to put things together, then finally pried his eyes open to find their bright mirror looking back at him in barely banked worry. "We home yet?" he managed to ask, mouth fumbling over the words a little.

"Not yet," Cas said, shifting his grip awkwardly; he'd clearly never held anyone like this before, and it showed, but there was so much love and fear in the gesture that it made Jimmy feel warm emotionally, if not more literally. "I wanted to take care of you, first."

"I'm okay," Jimmy just said, closing his eyes again and using some of his precious energy to shift positions a little into something more natural. "I think I changed you, you're glowing a little more blue and white right now."

Cas gave a breath of a laugh at that, faint and shaky. "You changed me long before this, Jimmy Novak." 

"I know." He was sinking back into oblivion, but he was good with that. Even so, he wanted to make sure Cas was okay, too. "Gonna be able to do this?"

"I think so. Yes."

"Good. Wake me up... later." Jimmy smiled, leaving his head against Cas's shoulder. "The fighter still remains."

"Yes.” Cas tightened arms and wings around him, almost reflexively, protectively, voice ringing with warmth and pride. “He does."

Jimmy was still smiling when sleep claimed him.


	15. XV.

**XV.**

**2012**

"Then the answer's simple: We leave Heaven."

Naomi's faction wasn't the only one hunting Jimmy and Caius, just the most frightening, and every pause was getting shorter. Caius was next to impossible to live with, a constant ball of agitation, though he never once threatened to abandon Jimmy to try to run and hide on his own. Jimmy was feeling the beating his soul was taking from the constant travel; the only time he managed to sleep, to rest, was when Samandiriel was carrying him. He'd long since stopped feeling bizarre letting the angel carry him around, because all of the times (and there were many) where he had to jump through the outer belts with Caius alone were wretched beyond description.

Outer _belts_ , plural; they'd left the first one behind about thirty-eight jumps ago.

Caius was even looking frayed; tired, dark rings under his eyes, and his feathers were askew. Jimmy had already noticed that the former vessel of an archangel didn't need nearly as much sleep as a normal human, but it was grinding him down pretty badly, too.

"And go where?" Caius asked, folding a wing around himself listlessly to smooth feathers back into place. "Wander the Earth like a pair of ghosts? Because that's pretty much what we are, kiddo. Just because we know more doesn't mean we'd be any different than any other spirit down there going nuts."

"What's the alternative here?" Jimmy asked back, leaning back against the side of a skateboard ramp. "Capture and confinement? I mean, I think I'd rather take the risk of going crazy, if it'll get me back to Cas."

Caius snorted softly, dismissively. "He could have called you back at any time, you know."

Jimmy blinked, opening his eyes from where they'd fallen closed against his insistence they not. "What?"

"And you could have asked to go back, too." Caius's eyes were narrowed almost viciously on his own wing, as he plucked a damaged feather and shoved it into his pocket. "And if you were both in agreement, badda-bing, badda-boom, you're back together and all is well. If you weren't, well..." He shrugged, with a bitter twist of a smirk.

"I couldn't hear him." Jimmy wondered a little why his own voice sounded so far away. "Not without spellwork, anyway, and that took me what, a year?"

Caius flicked that gold-eyed gaze at him for a moment, a mix between human and angelic, then went back to his careful grooming. "Maybe it was different with you two," he said, still with a casualness that was so much bullshit that someone would have to be wilfully ignoring it to miss it.

They didn't talk much, him and Caius; not like he had with Cas, and not like he did when he was coherent enough to engage with Samandiriel. Mostly, Caius treated Jimmy like an errant, stupid teenager on the run from the cops, and acted like one himself with the added bonus of having a healthy dose of Gabriel-esque arrogance. There was no denying that Caius was far, far more experienced in dealing with the angelic and the intricacies of Heaven, but he never really bothered to share his knowledge.

And he did this a lot. Assumed that Jimmy knew something when he didn't. "Care to explain what you mean?"

"Nah."

Jimmy narrowed his eyes a little, calling up a smirk of his own. "Let me guess: You and Gabriel didn't agree."

It was a shot in the dark.

It was a bullseye.

Caius was towering over him, wings flared, before Jimmy even saw him move. "You will not speak of him," he said, and Jimmy thought that if he had Gabriel's voice to go with Gabriel's wings, Jimmy might even have bleeding ears.

As it happened, Jimmy was both unafraid and unintimidated. It was a deliberate provocation, and he wasn't sure why he was provoking, but it seemed the best way to potentially get answers. "He left you here, didn't he?"

"This is none of your business, _mortal_ ," Caius spat back, and then snapped his wings back to folded, turning to stalk away. "And if you keep it up, I will leave your uneducated ass here for that creepy bitch to find."

"You're a mortal, too," Jimmy pointed out, still calm, getting to his feet. "And I don't think you will. I haven't figured out why, but I have a feeling you don't really want to do that."

"Don't bet your soul on it," Caius said, with a slow, cold smirk.

Admittedly, Jimmy _wouldn't_ ; there were some lines that you couldn't cross with impunity. Even so, he wanted to cross a few more, and now that he knew the weak spot in Caius's armor, he went to work doing what he was good at -- figuring out how to peel it away and get to the soft spaces behind. It made him a good salesman, it made him an ideal angelic companion, and now it might just give them a direction that wasn't running in desperate circles.

"Before he died, he left you here." Jimmy tilted his head a little, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. "I mean, it took me and Cas getting blown up a second time to throw us apart."

Caius didn't answer, and just shook his head, his agitation fading in the light of weariness. And despite the near perfect poker face, Jimmy could see the heartsickness behind it for the split second before Caius turned and walked away. "Catch your breath while you can, we move in five."

 

 

 

Samandiriel was a fascinating angel, Jimmy had found; most of the time, he was all too happy to lapse into sleep and let himself be carried for awhile, but when he wasn't, he was intrigued as all get out by the angel who was a much closer brother to Cas than many of the others Jimmy had met, both in when they were made and in how Samandiriel clearly still felt. They were so different in ways, yet oddly _not_ in others. Where Castiel was battle-weary and kept himself carefully tucked behind his psychological armor (at least until he'd lost his mind in a big way), Samandiriel was still light and very open.

And yet, it was Cas who Jimmy felt was the more vulnerable of the two. Samandiriel wore his emotions (angelic, but real and genuine) without reserve. Cas was wary and guarded, and tried to keep his emotions (grittily human at points) banked behind any wall he could. 

But it was Samandiriel who didn't seem half so fragile, even when Jimmy went back over memories from first meeting Castiel. He was utterly unwilling to judge the mistakes of his siblings, and clearly grieved and loved all of them, but seemed all the more put together and resolute for that steadfast neutrality.

"I remembered his voice," Samandiriel had said, at one point while they were travelling, tone filled with love and nostalgia. Jimmy didn't fail to note that Cas had said the exact same thing, when he had first heard Gabriel again. "I hadn't heard it since he took up the blade, until he was singing your name; it was such a sad song, but he still has a beautiful voice."

"Yeah," Jimmy had answered, feeling the desperate ache of _loneliness_ right then. "He does."

He could almost imagine what they would have sounded like singing together; Cas's more nuanced, heavier layered voice in compliment to Samandiriel's lighter, clearer, purer one. Even in his imagination, it was a song that made Jimmy curse his inability to sob.

Where Jimmy and Caius were feeling the constant pressure, Samandiriel seemed nearly unaffected by it. He showed up as often as he could, and always seemed fresh and game to help them in any way he could; he clearly worried for them and their safety, but his own health didn't seem to take any battering. He was helpful and kind, and he brought them information, advised them which way to dodge their followers, and was much more forthright than Caius was.

Which was why Jimmy asked, when Samandiriel appeared at their next rendezvous, "Is it true? Could Cas have called me back to my body?"

Samandiriel looked at him, and then nodded. Though it was a tentative nod. "I think so. He could carry Dean Winchester's soul from Hell and return it to Earth. He still has your body as his vessel. I think he could have, though I've never heard of anyone doing so before."

"We break all the rules," Jimmy said, with the best smile he could force. "Could I have called him?"

"That I don't know." Samandiriel reached out and drew Jimmy into his side, comfortably wrapping him in a wing and an arm, as he had more times than Jimmy could remember. "There's a connection, between an angel and their true vessel, but as to whether it would still apply here in Heaven-- I don't know. The only two to ever become as you and he were was Gabriel and Caius, and they were unique unto themselves as well." He gave an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry I don't know more."

Caius came back from wherever he'd gone, wings heavy at his back, and gave Samandiriel the rare unguarded smile he seemed to save for the angel alone. "Ready to hit the road?”

"I'm ready as I'll ever be," Jimmy said, even as Samandiriel nodded. It was more information than he had before, at least. He let out a weary breath, letting his eyes close, and offered a quirk of a smile when Samandiriel put him back into the too-brief but definitely blissful land of his own dreams.

 

 

 

"Purgatory. We could go to Purgatory," Jimmy said, not quite sure he was in his right mind, however many jumps later. Trying to think through strategy was difficult at best, but he wasn't giving up.

Caius just dropped in a pile of feathers and limbs, landing with a huff on someone's very nice bed, eyes closed and groaning, "That sounds like a nifty vacation. Instead of going nuts on Earth, we can spend forever running from monsters! Brilliant, get back to me when it's time to hop on the train to Stupidity Town."

"I wasn't thinking forever," Jimmy answered, falling backwards on the edge of the bed, leaving a couple of feet between them. "Just long enough for these jerks to lose our trail. No one cracked Purgatory before Cas did, so it's not like they'd be able to find us easily."

Caius pried his eyes open and peered at Jimmy from under the edge of a wing, balefully. "If it took him how long to do it, what hope do you think we have of figuring it out?"

"I dunno. But we're gonna misstep eventually, and then we're gonna be locked up for God knows how long and God knows what reason. It beats that, I think."

Caius was staring, now. Like Jimmy had just grown a second head, or maybe turned green. After a moment of that intense look, Jimmy felt like squirming. Then Caius just said, heavily, eyes closing for a moment, "You stupid son of a bitch. You really don't know why you're being hunted? You're smart enough to figure out how to dream walk your Castiel and you don't know why you're running?"

Jimmy blinked. He wasn't sure whether he was offended by the insults, or flattered by the sideways compliment. "Uh, no?"

"You mean so much to the last seraph in existence that he burned your name into the fabric of the universe with his mourning song." Caius's gaze hardened there, though Jimmy didn't know if it was at him, or at the circumstances. "They don't want you because you broke a whole bunch of Heavenly rules by dream walking outside, Novak, they want you because if they have you, they can get to _him_. He's no archangel, but he's more powerful than anything _any_ of them have right now. They have you, and they can leverage him. They just didn't know he was alive, and after they did, they didn't know where you were until you managed to show up on their radar, or they already would have had you both."

Jimmy failed to close his mouth, even as his mind reeled for having that put into perspective. Because he had heard Cas, because he knew that it was loud enough to hear from his heaven, and he knew Samandiriel had heard it, but he just never really _thought_ about it before. He had felt it so damn deep himself, and he knew Cas had, but he never considered it in terms of the big picture. It never occurred to him that--

"Did Gabriel sing yours?" he asked, sounding more stunned than he meant to.

Caius huffed a miserable breath, smiling a brittle little smile. "He didn't have to. I was always going to go back to him. I just wanted a break. I was bored with the trickster gig, and don’t even get me started on what we did in the Sixties. I was ready for a nice long break from it. It hurt like hell to leave him, it hurt both of us, but we always knew we'd come back together."

Despite every bit of animosity (and there was a lot of it), Jimmy felt his heart squeeze hard. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out before Caius went on, "And then he went and got his stupid ass into this apocalypse bullshit, and I called for him, and told him to bring me back. And that over-protective idiot told me _no_. He actually had the nerve to tell _me_ no. I was so pissed off I couldn't see straight." Caius grit his teeth loud enough to hear. "And then he died. My Gabriel. And now I have to spend the rest of eternity without him. Archangels aren't supposed to die. And he did. And I didn't even get to burn with him, because I would have."

Then his eyes snapped open and he glared at Jimmy in a perfect echo of Gabriel himself. "And fuck you, for making me think about it, too. This ever leaves us--" He gestured loosely between them. "--I'll make you pay. Got me?"

Jimmy stared back, then reached out to the not-man-not-angel, smoothing a hand over the near wing and not failing to see the flash of wounded loneliness behind those blazing eyes. But Caius didn't pull his wing back, even as he still glared, and Jimmy just said, "Yeah. I've got you."

"Good." Caius's mouth twisted, bitter, and then he turned to face the other way, closing himself back off again.

 

 

 

"Avalon?"

"Nope. No way to get there from here."

Jimmy bit off a sigh. "There has to be somewhere better than here."

Caius shrugged, leaning heavily against a tree, eyes closed. He thought, then barked a laugh. "Ha! Oz."

"...Oz? As in...?"

"God was totally doing acid, when he came up with that idea."

Jimmy gaped at him. "Really?"

Caius smirked and reached out, giving him a shove in the shoulder that was almost -- almost -- affectionate. "No, God wasn't dropping acid. Or maybe he was. No one knows." A beat, then he added, "Oz is real, though. The wicked witch? She was wicked in bed, too, before she went all nasty crone."

"You--"

"Oh, yeah." Caius waggled his eyebrows, and then pushed off of the tree, pretending like he wasn't the exhausted, somewhat bedraggled vessel of an archangel. "Glinda, too. Not at the same time, though."

"Wow." Jimmy couldn't believe he was having this conversation. He blinked, then shook his head, then looked at Caius again. "Really?"

Caius spread his hands out, eyebrows jumping and head bowing slightly in false modesty. "Really. Who could resist?"

 

 

 

"Joshua," Jimmy tried, panting and shivering, the first thing he'd said in two days where they were bouncing so fast from heaven to heaven that even Samandiriel looked slightly ruffled.

Caius was literally wavering on his feet, head hanging. "Why would you want to talk to that asskissing fence-rider?"

"Caius," Samandiriel said, heavy with disapproval, reaching out to steady Caius first, then Jimmy.

"No. Really. Why? Because he's the only one Dad talks to anymore, if he even still does? He's not gonna help us, kid. He doesn't help anyone."

Jimmy nodded, even as he rubbed at his forehead, not bothering to point out to Caius that calling God Dad was-- well, maybe it was right. The more exhausted he got, the more Caius acted like Gabriel; glib and flippant and reckless, and that said a lot, because he _already_ acted like Gabriel. He could go from that to quietly angry and vulnerable and back again at the flip of a switch. "I know he won't help. But he might have information."

"And going to the Garden? Your hobby wasn't, you know, teabagging sharks or something on Earth, was it? _Everyone_ will zero in on us, if we go there."

"Teabagging?" Samandiriel asked, looking at Jimmy for clarification.

There was _no way_ that Jimmy was explaining that to an angel. Not now, not ever. "It's just about the last idea I've got, Caius."

"And it's the worst idea ever," Caius answered, peevishly.

Samandiriel looked up, and Caius did only a moment later, and Jimmy knew exactly what that meant -- they were being followed too closely. He didn't even say anything, just got himself on one side of the angel and dragged the wavering Caius in to the other, and closed his eyes, and waited for the inevitable.

Caius collapsed two jumps later. Jimmy made it all of another three after that before he did, too.


	16. XVI.

**XVI.**

**2010**

The very last time Jimmy got to feel Castiel blaze with true wrath was well before the actual end, and it was beautiful and terrible all at once, every bit of awe and fear that humanity had for angels in Biblical times embodied in this angel.

The very first time Jimmy thought of Castiel as _his_ angel was at the same time, and it was overwhelming and protective and possessive even beyond what he already was, every bit of humanity's existential rage embodied in this man.

And every bit of all of it was directed at God.

 

 

First, though, came the whole Famine incident. Jimmy was still kind of dazed after his donation of a piece of his soul to the cause, and Cas was still shining with a light not entirely his own, and so it was perfectly easy for both of them to fall into that trap before they even knew it.

_Geez, that looks good,_ Jimmy said, eying Dean's untouched hamburger.

Cas didn't even answer, he just went for it. It should have been a warning. Jimmy occasionally grabbed them something while they were on the move, but it had become an afterthought even in his own mind these days; a wild pear growing, or a few coins in exchange for a piece of candy as they roamed. Despite the peculiarity of it, of not actually _needing_ a large chunk of his bodily functions, it was easy to slip into the more angelic mindset of mission and action. Their personal indulgences were song and talk, of clinging increasingly tightly to one another in what was feeling like an increasingly hostile world, not food and drink.

But the craving didn't go away when Cas reluctantly had to set the burger down. And it wasn't just Jimmy craving meat, he figured out in retrospect. He wanted meat, but Cas wanted _simplicity_ ; he wanted to follow orders and sink himself into the odd freedom of _not_ having to think constantly, of not having to make any of the millions of small decisions that came naturally to a human, but not an angel.

By the time Jimmy, already weakened and easily overtaken by hunger, was issuing orders for more, Cas was all too happy to follow them. The burgers made Jimmy happy, which in turn made Cas happy, and they were both surprisingly content even when it got to the point they were eating raw hamburger. An angel's ability not to be killed by it probably helped.

Their penance for failing was watching Dean breaking apart, which tore at Cas and made Jimmy ache, and listening to Sam howl through withdrawal, which tore at them both.

Oddly, Cas took seeing the Winchesters dead and covered in blood considerably less hard than watching and listening to them suffer. Jimmy was shocked and horrified by the scene. Cas was _sanguine_ by comparison, staring at the bodies of the two men he'd grown to love with the thoughtful detachment of a soldier about to make use of this incident to further his own campaign.

Jimmy thought there that if Cas were human and stranded in the mountains after a plane crash, he'd probably be the one to calmly advocate eating the bodies of fellow passengers, since they were already dead and clearly didn't need them anymore. (Later, he was sure of it, and the thought actually made him laugh; soldiers develop a dark sense of humor.)

But that hadn't happened yet, so Cas was sanguine and Jimmy was horrified.

_But they're dead,_ Jimmy said, reeling. Their great hope, the brothers they had pinned their two lives on, so utterly and undeniably dead.

Cas's voice was soothing, overlaying thoughtful. _It's okay, they won't stay that way. They're far too important to be allowed to remain in Heaven. In the meantime, if we can contact them, we may be able to have them gain some intelligence for us_.

_Seriously?_ Jimmy just asked, kind of flabbergasted.

_Seriously,_ Cas answered.

 

 

They didn't stay with the bodies. Even as he rushed to gather ingredients, many of which he had stashed away in various places on the American continent before he was weakened enough that flying became true effort, Cas explained what he was doing to Jimmy; Jimmy suspected it was more for wanting to talk than anything else.

Sometimes, he barely remembered when getting more than a word or two out of Cas was like pulling teeth; now, it just flowed, easy and natural.

_This is pagan magic; during the war, we were always looking for new ways to avoid having messages intercepted. My brothers and sisters were not particularly pleased with me adapting this spell, but it did work._ Cas sounded a little internally proud of himself; Jimmy always liked to hear it. It was a quiet pride, not an arrogance -- of a job well done, of a skill he had, of himself. By any standard, Castiel had an angel's arrogance; by Jimmy's experience, that was all species-based, and Cas's individual pride was nearly nonexistent. Therefore, his ability to be proud of himself, even a little, was heartening. _Hell's forces were considerably more creative than we were -- to be able to turn around and find something that caught them off-guard was strategically sound, despite where it came from._

Jimmy watched as Cas added ingredients to the silver bowl of water they were sitting cross-legged in front of; added ambrosia and nectar, which initiated the spell, and Dean's amulet, which clinked against the bottom of the bowl and targeted the spell, and then he actually reached back and pulled one of his own feathers through the layers of reality until it solidified in his hand, just this side of white. Jimmy felt him wince when he pulled it; it was one of the small ones, close to their body.

That, Cas incinerated in his hand, then sprinkled into the bowl as fine ash. _Why the feather?_ Jimmy asked, resisting the urge to interrupt the spellwork to reach back and rub the faintly sore spot.

_No access to ichor; a manifestation of an angel's grace works in its stead,_ Cas answered in their head, even as he chanted in ancient Greek aloud, drawing their fingertips elegantly around the rim of the bowl. Inside, the mixture started swirling to follow the motion, sparking in blue. _Many of the Olympians were clever; Athena created this spell originally._

Cas always sounded oddly fond of that era of time; he spoke of it like Jimmy spoke about the first house he'd grown up in, even though the wallpaper was starting to peel and the hardwood floors creaked and got really cold in the winter. Castiel painted pictures of ancient times with that same wistfulness; distant and reminiscent.

The bowl was glowing properly now; the water still swirled, but now it looked like every ridge of it reflected back the silverlight that edged Cas's primary feathers.

"Dean?" Cas asked, leaning over and staring into the depths; Jimmy watched, quietly, fascinated with the the way he could see the spellwork layering and resolving. "Dean, can you hear me?"

There wasn't an answer, and Cas frowned, reaching back to tug another feather free, incinerate it and sprinkle it in. _Not enough power,_ he explained, even as Jimmy did the wincing for him. "Dean? Dean!" he tried again.

_"Cas?"_

"Yeah, it's me," Cas answered, relieved, half-distracted for a second by drawing his fingertips along the bowl's edge when the spell stuttered briefly. He went to say something else, then Dean's voice came through again.

_"You gotta stop poking around in my dreams. I need some me time."_

Jimmy didn't comment; the self-imposed moratorium on discussing Dean Winchester was likely never to be lifted. Even so, some part of him did want to snort in amusement, and he knew Cas could sense that because he felt the vaguely embarrassed ruffle in response, even as he went back to talking. "Listen to me very closely. This isn’t a dream."

When Dean answered, it sounded baffled. _"Then what is it?"_

"Deep down, you already know."

There was another pause, and then Dean said, _"I’m dead."_

_As a doornail,_ Jimmy thought, keeping it to himself; Cas probably knew it anyway, though, because he was entirely laconic as he just said, "Condolences."

_"Where am I?"_

"Heaven," Cas said, and then was frowning again as the spell was starting to fall apart in front of him; he muttered a few quiet words in Greek, almost missing what Dean was asking even as he tried to keep the spell together. Jimmy heard it; Dean wanted to know how he ended up in Heaven. Cas just breezed past it, in typical angelic form. "Please listen; this spell, this connection, is difficult to maintain," he said, and he went to go on--

_"Wait. If I’m in heaven, then where’s Sam?"_

\--and then had to bite back a sigh of frustration that Jimmy could feel bubble up. But even so, Cas asked, "What do you see?"

_"What do you mean ‘what do I see?'"_

Castiel cast their eyes Heavenward in a moment of irritation, and Jimmy chewed down an internal grin. "Some people see a river, or a tunnel. What do you see?"

_"Nothing. My dash. I’m in my car. I’m on a road."_

"All right. A road. For you, it's a road. Follow it, Dean. You'll find Sam." Cas looked back down, scowling as his spell started unwinding itself; he tried to stabilize it again, but even Jimmy could tell they were running out of time and would have to start over in a moment. "Follow the road," he said, even though neither of them knew if it would be heard; the water became simple water again. _Hopefully next time, we'll be able to get a better connection,_ he said, going back to his own voice in their head, quietly agitated as he went to dump the water and start all over again.

_We will,_ Jimmy answered, and felt Cas’s flash of gratitude for the backup. _One way or another, we'll hopefully get some answers,_ he added, aiming for reassurance.

He didn't know how much he would regret that hope until later. Just felt the spurring edge of excitement and _finally_ when Cas managed to direct Dean and Sam to find Joshua, the only angel who still heard God. The only one who would be able to give them answers.

The only one who might be able to make all of the searching and seeking and flying and fighting and losing and bleeding make sense.

And then the cell rang.

And then.

And then.

 

 

Punch drunk.

This would be how later Jimmy would come to categorize how both he and Cas felt, when Dean told them (verbatim, even) everything that Joshua had said. Dean relayed it like a report, factual and blunt, but there was a hard edge of anger under it in his voice. Jimmy had a passing thought that at least John Winchester had probably hugged his sons once before throwing them into supernatural warfare, but he couldn't quite figure out how that was related, and when he went to try to follow the track of the thought and maybe even speak up, he ended up losing it.

Cas didn't even really have it in him to finish cursing God, still reeling and dazed; Jimmy could feel him stop, freeze, then scramble anew for any thread of hope, looping back to look at the devastation like he might find something different, if only he could look at it from another angle. Circling, stopping, pacing the perimeter again. He was on the mental ropes, and Jimmy could do little more than try to hoist him back up. He didn't give a thought yet to his own anger (and it was there, waiting in the shadows) until they had returned Dean's amulet and flown, Sam's concerned voice following them.

Later, Jimmy would think that this is what it felt like to be punch drunk, and later he would be the one to suggest they go get hammered together now that their search had come to a brutal end, and later still he would remember Sam trying to stall Cas and love him for it, and much later yet, he would realize Dean's anger wasn't wholly selfish, but it wasn't later, it was now.

_Michael named me,_ Cas said, alighting them on the side of a pine-covered mountain, in a clearing, under a brilliant spread of stars. His voice wasn't the shattered it had been with Gabriel; if anything, it was distant and quiet, and if Jimmy wasn't sharing a skull with him, he might have even called it thoughtful. 

But it wasn't thoughtful. It wasn't really anything Jimmy could describe right then. 

_Michael named me,_ Cas repeated, softly, like he was trying to clutch onto something that was filtering through his fingers despite his best efforts. _Only the archangels were named by my Father_.

Jimmy didn't try to say anything; he knew Cas could feel his worry and his heartache, the silent wall ready to be leaned on. He just stood watch, as the angel paced again the perimeter of the blast crater that had just been blown into his entire world, seeking whatever might be left in the debris; neither human nor angelic eyes were focused right now.

It was a little like Jimmy had felt when they flew back to '78 and he was slammed into pain and heat at lightspeed, except this time, there wasn't the relief of unconsciousness. For himself, and probably for Cas, too. He wished that they were face-to-face; this was another time when he was sure that a hug would help at least one of them, and probably both of them.

_I don't understand._ It was the flat, factual tone. Guileless and angelically other, which might have worked better if Jimmy didn't know just how deep these waters ran, especially now that he'd been in them himself for so long. _He made this. Did He not? He made this._

_He did,_ Jimmy said, calm, which didn't do a damn thing to mask the ache watching Castiel scrambling to make some kind of sense of it all. _He brought you back, too. At least you know, now._

The rush of anger and power felt like fire and ice, and for the first time since they'd died, Jimmy remembered why he'd said it was like being chained to a comet. If he wasn't fairly immune to it by now, it would probably hurt.

"I don't understand," Cas said aloud, both voices, deceptively calm. _I don't understand,_ he repeated, just his own voice, in their head again. _Michael named me. I don't understand. He made this. My Father. He made this. This ending. This madness. He made this. He brought me back, why did He bring me back? For this? I don't understand. Why? **Why?**_

There was the heart of it. There was always the heart of it. _"Why, why?"_

Cas tried one more time to pace the devastation, and Jimmy could feel all of that last desperate scramble for air, and the first inhale of water; the good son, the soldier who fought in God's name, the singer who sang His praises, the angel trying to save God's favorite creations, the faithful rebel who just spent the last several months flying and searching well past the point of exhaustion, realizing that his Father, who he had been made to love, created to love

didn't

 

care.

 

And in one moment, glorious and terrible, Castiel -- Angel of the Absent Lord -- turned his eyes up to where his Father should have been and even if he had a million years, Jimmy Novak would never be able to describe the sound that the angel made; it was not a wail or a scream or a warcry or a song, but it was all of those, and it was rage and grief and betrayal and love and pain and defiance and it was all angelic, made of thousands of years and two years and one day; it was cracked and it was unbending, all at once, and it _burned_ , and Cas bared Jimmy's teeth and he _burned_ , great scarred wings arching up and blazing with holy light, edges of pinions shining silverlight brilliance, and the air crackled with lightning, and the sky answered with thunder, and there was no way that God couldn't have heard it, His own wrath directed back at Him by His lost son.

And just like he had been steeling himself to do, Jimmy was there to catch his angel when he fell, too.

 

 

In the several hours that followed, Cas only said one word, small and wounded, and it was _Claire,_ and it was all human.

And Jimmy knew that Cas got it now; got it like he might never have gotten it even for trying before, what it was to lose a father, and what it was then that he had done to her father.

"Castiel, Castiel," he sang softly, feeling Cas flinch slightly from the pain of it, because everything right now was pain; he just tightened his grip on his otherwise lifelessly still angel, tucked away in their dark no-space, tucked against Jimmy's chest because Jimmy put him there like he could somehow protect him from what no one, man nor angel, could. And Jimmy poured every bit of honesty, every bit of human compassion and human empathy and human tears, into it and answered, "I love you. I forgive you."


	17. XVII.

**XVII.**

**2012**

"Shhhh. You can rest more." Samandiriel's voice was soft and clear in the darkness, and Jimmy was vaguely aware that he was being petted again.

He was also aware of being hidden under at least one set of wings, and when he pried his eyes open to the soft glow filtering down from the angel's wings, he found himself staring into the sleeping face of Caius, only inches from his own; the wing covering him in warmth belonged to Caius, and Samandiriel's was shielding both of them a handful of inches above that.

Jimmy went to pick his head up and look around, but Samandiriel kept a hand on him and didn't let him. "What...?"

"We're in hiding; we're no where." There was something worryingly literal about those words, but Samandiriel didn't elaborate. "Don't look; it's not something you want to see."

"Why are we hiding... no where?" Jimmy asked, wondering absently if Caius had arranged them like this; given the ragged, harrowed look on the man's still face, though, he doubted it. Still, it felt good to be warm, even if it meant cuddling with one of the most prickly people Jimmy had met in a long time.

"No one would think to look here. No one would _want_ to," the angel answered, switching from petting Jimmy to petting Caius, as though soothing battered souls was something he did every day.

Maybe he did.

Jimmy fell quiet at that, letting it work over in his tired mind. So, they were no where, and it was a place that no one would want to be. He gave a faint shiver at the thought and managed to look up at Samandiriel out of the corner of his eye, taking in the expression of abject sorrow. "Are you okay?"

Samandiriel blinked, then looked down, face smoothing into something more like his usual serenity. "I'm okay. It doesn't hurt to be here, it just makes me sad. This is where all of the souls go that-- that don't want anything to come after death. Who just-- just wanted it to be over. It makes me sad; that they could be so tired or hurt," he said, gently, and Jimmy didn't miss the way his eyes flicked to Caius, or the way his hand paused briefly in its petting to press against Caius's head before resuming.

Jimmy didn't comment on it, just noted it and offered a little smile back at the angel. "I can kind of understand it, though. I wasn't ready to go there, yet, but I can understand it. It's what they want, you know?"

Samandiriel looked off again, though, still with sorrow. "I understand it. It just makes me sad. Souls are a beautiful gift; they are so unique, each so individual, and creative. It just seems sad that some want only nothingness." He switched his petting back to Jimmy again, unselfconsciously.

"Can I help?" Jimmy asked; if Samandiriel was willing to put himself through it, the least Jimmy could do was make it more bearable.

Samandiriel looked off for another moment, then tilted his head in a way that reminded Jimmy of Castiel, looking down at him. "Tell me how you got my brother to sing again?"

"I just asked him," Jimmy answered, not really all that shocked by the question. "The first time, anyway. It was before--" He wasn't sure how much to go into this; he tended to keep Cas's vulnerabilities as guarded as his own. "It was really early on. We didn't really know each other and I spent most of my time asleep. But I remembered how he used to talk to me, and his voice, and of course everyone knows angels sing, so I asked him if he knew how. And I didn't think about it at the time, the way he replied, but he said, 'Yes. I remember how to sing.' Now that I know him, I know what that actually means, but I didn't then. So, not too long later, I had woken up and before he put me to sleep, I kind of blurted out, 'Will you sing for me?' And he kind of paused, I guess you could call it, and then he sang part of the song to me before he put me back to sleep."

Samandiriel was watching him intently, openly hanging on every word, though Jimmy didn't know if it was for the story itself or for the distraction from the sadness the angel could see around them. 

"And after we got to know each other better, and I was awake, I'd sing here or there to keep myself occupied while he moved us around. Sometimes, he'd hum back at me, a few notes. Eventually, one day while we were both really tired, sitting in the Australian Outback -- I was in control then -- I managed to badger him into singing the Beatles with me." Jimmy grinned a little; the memory still gave him a warm rush, a joy, even now. "He was incredulous and thought it was ridiculous, but he gave in and sang with me anyway. And after that, I'd sing at him, and he'd jump in. He was my Art Garfunkel. Once in a rare while, he'd sing to me instead of with me; he sang Bridge Over Troubled Water to me once. I sang Shelter From the Storm for him."

Samandiriel nodded; he didn't ask about the songs, which made Jimmy wonder if he had heard them before. He looked somehow wistful, and somehow pleased, all at the same time, and Jimmy was touched by it; by the warmth in the expression. Then Samandiriel looked off again, for a moment, before turning his attention back to Jimmy with a little smile. "Will you sing for me?"

That one did surprise Jimmy, and he chuckled. "I guess. I’m better singing duet with Cas, but I can probably not miss too many notes solo. Got any requests?"

Samandiriel thought about it, head tilted, then gave a rather human shrug. "Anything."

Jimmy nodded; thought about it himself, looking up at the angel next to him, sheltering and protecting him for no other reason than love of his brothers, and then over at the still passed-out not-man-not-angel next to him, barely covering up a still-bleeding loss with battered armor, and then sang softly, "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: Let it be...

"And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom: Let it be..."

 

 

 

Caius didn't stir for a long time; long enough that Jimmy just threw in the towel and put the not-man-not-angel on his shoulder, head in the hollow, which he wouldn't admit even under duress was empathy. He tried to imagine what it would be like to spend three thousand years so intimately wrapped up with someone, and what it would be like to lose that. And he couldn't. He couldn't even begin to. It wasn't even a full two years that he and Cas were sewn into the same skin, and Jimmy still felt like he was missing parts of himself now that they weren't.

Angels had poor boundaries, if you could argue they had any boundaries at all, and some of that had rubbed off on Jimmy. Not all; even to the very end, he and Cas kept thoughts to themselves. But they were definitely tangled together, too, and when he thought about what Caius said, about Cas blazing in grief, he had to think about a lot of other things.

Like what it means to be so loved by a seraph that you’re a chink in his armor, even as you’re also his sword and shield. Jimmy had gotten behind Cas’s armor -- found a space for himself there, a vulnerable space that Cas didn’t even give to _Dean_ \-- and now he was being hunted. And if he was captured before he could return...

And even if he did make it back, what would it be for them? Jimmy knew about halfway through the Apocalypse -- really knew, didn’t just know it intellectually -- that he was never going to get to go back to Amelia and Claire. Worse, he knew that if he were given the chance right this moment, he wouldn’t take it; some three years ago now they had heard they would never see Jimmy again, right from the angel’s mouth, and he knew they were doing okay. Not that he was forgotten. But that they had managed to salvage a life and move forward.

And if Cas had managed to actually go to them before vanishing, then they knew Jimmy was dead now, too, instead of just inaccessible. Going back now would be more cruel, than kind. So, what would it be for him and Cas, if he did make it back? Even as good as he was at and with sharing his body, there were still a lot of questions.

But there wasn’t any easy answer. 

There wasn't much to do in Heaven when you knew too much but to think, and he spent a lot of time thinking about it all. There was some temptation to think he'd lost his mind. There was some temptation to think that they really had been dangerously entwined, which probably wasn't too far from the truth. There was even some temptation to resent the Hell out of it all, though he couldn't make himself; the resentment would be false, even if any normal human would have felt it.

Eternal salvation was, frankly, bad for the soul. At least, it was for Jimmy's soul. He wasn't ready to go into the ether of no where, but all of the time thinking only managed to make him wonder about his sanity, and that was _before_ he was faced with Caius, who was so much _Gabriel_ that it was like walking around with an archangel's echo.

It wasn't that Jimmy failed to notice he had taken on some kind of angelic perspectives of his own; that he was not quite human anymore, not wholly.

It was just the question of whether or not the fact that Cas wasn't quite angel anymore made it right or not.

And there was no easy answer there, either. As many times -- and it had been many -- as Jimmy had thought about it, he had never found that answer. It wasn't all on him that Cas had been humanized as much as he had, but a good chunk of it was, and it was only when there was this amount of distance between them that Jimmy could wonder if it had done more harm than good, in the end. If those human attachments and human perspectives were what led to the Leviathan, to dealing with Crowley; what led to his angel making critical errors in judgment.

He was still chewing on it all when he came back to the present. "Have you been to Earth?" he asked Samandiriel, without preamble, a little drowsily.

"Many times," Samandiriel answered; there was nothing about the angel that wasn't patient. He seemed fine, if sad, just sitting watch over them. He didn't get bored while they slept, or if he did, he didn't act it when Jimmy woke again. "I used to walk amongst humanity, before we were forbidden to; after, I've only been a silent presence."

"What did you do?" Jimmy asked, rubbing pointlessly at his eyes.

"Watched over children. And inspired. I can't create, but I can inspire others to." Samandiriel smiled, looking off into some distance of his own. "In art or music or even procreation. So soon as you and Caius are safe, I think I'll return to it."

"A muse?"

"Yes, I've been called that before."

It was bizarrely fitting. Jimmy chewed on it in his head for a little bit, eyes closing again. He felt a lot better than he had, but something about this place made him feel like he could just go on sleeping, too. A hundred years. A thousand. "Did you ever get to know your vessels?"

"I knew them," Samandiriel said, after a thoughtful moment. "I didn't talk with them, after. But I knew them. I always made sure to take care of them, and when I left, they were always fine. I usually chose artists and musicians, and often they went on to be successful in their fields. I never had a true vessel, or it might have been different."

"Why not?" Jimmy asked; he'd never really even thought to ask for an explanation for the 'true' part of that title. For that matter, he wasn't sure he was ready to consider the implications of being Cas's right when he was conveniently needed to be. That way stood doors he wasn't yet willing to open.

"Muses, as you call them, have a different purpose from soldiers." Samandiriel was petting Caius again; Jimmy could feel the way it shifted Caius's head a little against his shoulder. "Why?"

"I don't know," Jimmy said, though that wasn't strictly true. So, he tried to elaborate, "I mean, I guess I was wondering how Cas and I ended up like this. Why we're different." Whether or not that was what was meant to happen.

There was such a long pause that Jimmy pried his eyes open, only to find Samandiriel still looking off contemplatively into whatever distance. Jimmy never really could get over that something so innocent could be possessed of such ancient wisdom; he thought, the longer he spent with Samandiriel, that he was probably the closest Jimmy would ever find to what angels were originally made to be, so very long ago.

Samandiriel dropped his head then and looked down at Jimmy, warm, with a smile. "Were you afraid?"

Jimmy blinked, taken aback. Thought back, all the way back to their beginning, and then he had to shake his head. Awed, yeah. Wondering. Shy, at first. Afraid for his own sanity initially. But no, he had never actually been afraid of Cas himself. "Not really, no."

"Did you ask for anything?"

"That he and Heaven take care of my family."

Samandiriel apparently had somewhere he was going with his line of questioning, because he answered, "I think that it's all of that. You weren't afraid -- and nearly everyone is -- and you wanted nothing of him that he wouldn't have given anyway, and that not for yourself. And when you did ask him for something, it was only for his voice in song; not for power, not for special favor with God, but only a song." Samandiriel paused there, a moment, then smiled a little. "Far more lauded relationships have been built on far shakier foundations; both of you brought to the other only what you could give, to each other or to the world."

Jimmy pondered that; he'd never really looked at it from that angle before. Especially given how much anger and betrayal came later. But when he remembered the curious voice that kept returning to talk to him, in dreams or over a radio or softly in his ear at his shoulder, asking for faith and offering the same, he found he couldn't actually deny it, either.

They'd both come to it with the best that they could.

 

 

 

"Morning, Princess Aurora," Jimmy said, with a chuckle, when Caius finally woke up and blinked in a moment of sleepiness, before figuring out he was being _cuddled_ and giving Jimmy a molten glare. "Any better?" Jimmy just asked, softening his teasing with a hair ruffle.

"Who? What?" Caius asked, groggy but clearing, drawing back and then frowning when Samandiriel curled his wing and used it to keep Caius pressed down under it. "What happened?"

"You collapsed," Samandiriel said, reaching across Jimmy to pet Caius's arm. "Stay down a little longer; we're no where."

Something blanked on Caius's face, but then he put on a smirk. "Wow, pick the most depressing place in Heaven for this extremely gay cuddle-pile, why don't you?"

"It was the only place they wouldn't look for us," Samandiriel said, apologetically.

"Yeah, I know." Caius never really seemed to be able to hold anything resembling a grudge with the angel; instead, he turned his attention back to driving Jimmy nuts. "Look, Novak, I know I'm all kinds of irresistible, but I promise, I'm way better conscious," he said, still smirking.

Jimmy was unfazed and just arched an eyebrow back. "That would probably be true if you could stop flapping your gums long enough. Ever hear the phrase 'a little less talk, a lot more action'? Because so far, all that's happening is this," he said, making a flapping mouth with his fingers.

Caius's mouth curled into a grin that could only be described as lascivious. "Guess I better do something about that," he said, softly, head tilting just a little, eyes narrowing intently.

Jimmy was a little _less_ unfazed at that. Note to self -- don't even fake-flirt with the vessels of certain archangels. Somehow, he still ended up saying (and kicking himself even as he did), "I'll believe it when I see it."

Caius's eyebrows just jumped briefly, either threat or promise, then he asked Samandiriel, "How long have we been here?"

"By our time, four days. By the greater time of Heaven and Earth, a month."

That didn't surprise Caius, but it did surprise Jimmy. "Wait, a month? Will they have stopped looking for us?"

"I'm hoping," Samandiriel said, easily. "I'm not sure where we should go from here, though. We can't stay indefinitely."

"My Not-So-Secret Admirer here thinks we need to storm the Garden," Caius said, tipping his head at Jimmy even as he stretched his own wings back behind him, bowing his back at the same time, trying to loosen up from the prolonged knock-out. "I vote for maybe swimming with piranha first, as the safer alternative."

"Couldn't we call Joshua somewhere else?" Jimmy asked; he had gone to retrieve Sam and Dean, after all.

"I could maybe take him a message," Samandiriel said, thoughtfully. "I don't think anyone suspects me of being your ally."

"No way, nu uh, not a _chance_ , kid," Caius said, face suddenly going serious. "If they haven't figured it out based on you disappearing for a month with us, then they're dumber than they look. And they look really dumb."

"I'm with Caius," Jimmy said, shaking his head. "They’ll have put two and two together. Isn't there another way to summon him?"

"Not without the it being noticeable and traceable." Samandiriel looked off into the no where, still clearly contemplating possibilities. "I would not trust any of my brothers and sisters right now with such a message," he said, sorrow creeping into his voice.

"What about--" Jimmy paused, and thought about it, eyes narrowing slightly. "What about non-angelic allies? Someone who could visit here without raising eyebrows, but isn't easily gotten to?"

"If you say the Winchesters, I swear--"

"Adrasteia." Jimmy reached up and pet along the Samandiriel's wing without thinking about it, soothing even as he looked well past it. "I know how to summon Adrasteia. She might help." He didn’t add that he might just have the answer to her question, too.

Caius coughed. "Well. If she forgave me for crawling out her window before her mother could catch me that one time..."


	18. XVIII.

**XVIII.**

**2010**

Castiel was a mercurial drunk.

He took to getting blasted with the same intense focus he did anything else, and dedicated them to the cause with the kind of diligence only an angel or an alcoholic could manage. It was Jimmy's idea to go on a bender, and he didn't think it was the worst one he'd ever had; Cas had gotten so quiet and still, the kind of quiet that you'd expect sitting vigil at a death bed, that anything was better than waiting for him to leave Jimmy and go find somewhere to curl up and shut down, maybe for good.

They actually paid for about an eighth of what they ended up drinking -- ("It's for a party," Cas said, with grave stoicism, under Jimmy's suggestion when the clerk was eyeballing the cases of liquor the angel kept carrying to stack beside the counter) -- by maxing out the emergency credit card that Dean had given Cas at some point.

Turned out that even probably three quarters fallen, it still took more than that to get them properly smashed. So, after they'd burned through the bottles upon bottles of whiskey and rum (and some apple brandy for Jimmy), they ended up going back kind of tipsy to finish the job, however long later after closing.

 _He has insurance,_ Jimmy said, and wondered at his own morality; that he was willing to not only encourage Cas to pull a B &E, but participate in one himself.

Cas didn't answer, but he did actually break into the liquor store after hours, handwaving the alarm and security cameras silent, and then proceeded to return to the seemingly futile task of overcoming his own angelic metabolism with massive quantities of alcohol.

When it did finally work, it was like being hit by a freight train.

The good part of it was that it brought Cas back to life. The bad part was that it didn't do a damn thing to numb how he felt.

Jimmy had plenty of quiet time to think while on this post-mission mission before being too drunk to, and for as angry as he was at God for his own sake, he found it paled in comparison for how he felt for Cas's. Because he might have lost faith, but he'd been losing it for quite awhile anyway. For him, he was losing faith in a deity, not an actual parent. And yeah, that was awful; the feeling that every prayer he had sent up, kneeling beside his bed since he was old enough to remember, was unheard or uncared for. It was. It pissed him off. It pissed him off to seeing-red mad, and it _hurt_ , too. For him, for Amelia, for Claire, for everyone who ever thought that they were loved and listened to.

It hurt because of his own failures as a father. It hurt because he couldn’t go thank God for Amelia still being there.

But to have been created specifically programmed to love a father who never so much as looked at you or named you, who never hugged you or told you how proud he was, who wouldn’t even see you when you were at the end of your rope...

It was a perfect red-hot rage Jimmy felt for himself, and even then it paled in comparison to how he felt for Cas.

Cas could barely fly, and when he landed them in the rain soaked Pacific Northwest, he quite literally landed them on their face, hitting the ground with a thud, one remaining bottle of apple brandy for Jimmy clutched in their fist. He didn't even have the coordination to move his wings any further than that, so they were just laying on either side of them, limp and unfolded.

The world smelled good. What Jimmy could smell of it past the booze, anyway. He managed to coordinate their limbs enough to turn them over, but he had to stop about halfway because he could feel it bending Cas's left wing in ways it shouldn't bend. _Can you shift those?_ he asked, more than a little slurred, not sure he wanted to attempt to sit up in this state and reach back and do so physically when they could be pushed a few layers away instead.

 _I don't care,_ Cas said back, and it was surprisingly melodic; slow and dazed, but not split or shattered. Missing some layers, thinner, but still a beautiful voice. _I don't care._ A beat. _I can try_.

It mostly worked, and then they were laying on loam, under evergreen and cloudbanks, staring up at the breaks in clouds spinning nauseating half-circles above them. Jimmy couldn't make much sense of it all himself; he could see the first several layers of reality, but everything was a jumble and he felt like they were sinking and sinking.

 _Don't let me,_ Cas murmured in their head. _Don't let me fall_.

Even sober, Jimmy wouldn't have been able to grasp all of the meanings in that statement. But even drunk, he knew that it had more than one, and even drunk, he wanted nothing more than to shield his angel from this. _Stay with me,_ he managed, even though he wanted to pass out and drift, floating in warmth and darkness, and forget it all for awhile. _Talk to me_.

 _What happens?_ Cas asked, and like he seemed to when he couldn't quite process something, took a moment and repeated, _What happens, when there is no one left who believes? No one left to have faith in me? I remember. I remember, a long time ago, I remember before the war, I-- I wish Sam would stop calling, I don't know what he could want. I don't have anything. I don't have anything, why must he call? What could I give him? I wish--_ he fell off into Latin briefly, then at a nudge from Jimmy, went back to English, _\--don't let me fall_.

Jimmy kept having to pry their eyes back open, so he wasn't sure how effective he was going to be at keeping them both conscious, but he redoubled his efforts anyway and shoved down the petulant urge to whine about it. With any luck, enough of the alcohol would burn off that passing out wasn't so easy. _I'm trying, Cas,_ he just said, or stumbled, forcing their eyes open again.

 _I know. I know. I'm sorry. You know that? That I'm sorry. I can't seem to stop being sorry._ The shift of thought and feeling was almost like a slow-moving river, right now; Cas, at his best, had trouble shifting mental tracks, but right now, he couldn't seem to pick one to stay on _. I never knew sorrow before. Not this. But before the war. There was no such thing, we had no word for it, because it didn't exist. Sorrow. Regret. Pain. Fear. None of that. None of that, before the war, and we had to come up with so many words, except we were not supposed to feel any of them_.

Jimmy gave up, right around there, fighting with their eyelids and turned his admittedly poor concentration on just keeping their head above the surface. He wanted to slide off, listening to Cas talk; the sound was hypnotic. Later, though not much later, he would have enough focus to realize all he was being told and put it together, but for now, he just listened and held them up from drowning again and again. _Why not?_

 _Because we were not._ Such a factual answer. A soldier's answer. A child's answer. _Because we were soldiers, and we were not Lucifer or the others; I remember, I even remember their names, our fallen, we once all sang the same song together. I don't want it to go dark, don't let me go,_ Cas said, going from dazed melody to vaguely anxious harmony, and Jimmy thought back to the twice now that Cas had come back around screaming and not remembering why. _I don't know where I go, when it happens, I don't know, except that when I come back I feel like I am missing parts and pieces, so don't let me go, please don't let me go_.

 _Shhhhh_ , Jimmy just soothed, mostly in their head, some aloud. _Shh, I won't. Just stay. I'm here, don't let go of me_.

 _I'm not. Except I want to-- rest, stop, for awhile. But I'll just come back again, maybe missing parts._ Cas dragged in a slow, deep breath, instinctively looking for air to try to clear their head, maybe Jimmy's instinct, then let it out and Jimmy could feel just how boneless they were on the ground. His voice was so matter-of-fact, as he went on, _I'm so tired, Jimmy. I think I have been for a long time. What happens? What happens, when no one believes anymore? I think she would be my ally now. Adrasteia. I think I know. I think I have her answer_.

Jimmy's heart cracked for about the millionth time, for that. The want to cry, to just shatter, was almost overpowering. To fix this. To make it better. He wanted to tell Cas that he wasn't a broken, winged thing. Except, he was a broken, winged thing. And he wanted to give back the hard, unyielding determination that he had actually been trying to soften all this time. And he wanted to give the angel a hug, too, because even though Cas was still baffled by most contact, even contact in their no-space, he still needed it.

And he wanted to punch God out. Which was so wholly, entirely opposite of everything he had ever wanted, before he found himself in possession of one of God's lost angels.

He could feel Cas slipping off, and for the sake of more direct interaction (and without much thought to their body laying in the woods), he dragged them both back into their no-space, just so he could give Cas a proper shake. They ended up sprawled on their sides, barely anything one could argue was conscious, but Jimmy reached out anyway and did the first thing that came naturally, which was get Cas by the lapels of the overcoat the angel manifested with even here to jostle him back to awareness. "Hey. C'mon, Cas, wake up. Talk to me."

It took a little work, but Cas finally said, trying and failing to open his eyes, "What do you want me to talk about?"

"Anything. Anything you want." The urge to just sink right now was almost unbearable; Jimmy knew he wasn't actually helping with that any when he did the second thing that came naturally and tugged Cas's ethereal form in to wrap back in his arms, but he couldn't fathom _not_ doing so right now. "You wanted me to keep you awake."

"Why do you do this?" Cas asked, though he didn't do anything to pull away, just settled still and loose; his human voice was barely there, and his own voice was distant and still surprisingly clear, if slow and missing layers. "This, this comforting. It hurts, as often as it helps. It makes no sense. Angels do not do this for each other, only humans, and not all of those even."

"Because you need it," Jimmy said, letting his eyes slide closed, shrugging with voice and eyebrows instead of shoulders. "Because it helps, to give it."

"I have hurt you and still you give it." Probably with some serious effort, Cas managed to pull a wing up and cover them both with it, letting it lay across both their shoulders and sides. "You give it, and it hurts and helps. Why?” And as Jimmy was trying to figure out how to answer, Cas jolted a little, fighting to stay awake; still sounding oddly calm, as he said, “I don't want to go, don't let me go, I don't want to wake up and have missing pieces."

"I don't know if I can keep you awake," Jimmy said, tightening his grip a little. "But I won't let you go. I promise. I'll be here."

"I remember. I remember, what it was like," Cas said, after a moment, and it was such a pretty sound, clear and almost lyrical, like listening to some far off choir singing, "before there was a word for fear. I think sometimes I would like to go back there, before there was a word for fear. I remember. I remember, the first time I felt it, before it had a name, I remember because my Father was angry, before anger had a name, and I remember silence, before silence had a name, too; all of those, all of those. Anger and then fear and silence; my Father's anger silenced the choir, and we feared, and we trembled. All before. All before they had names. I had never known any of them, and now I can never forget them."

Jimmy didn't have anything -- anything in the universe, anything between them -- that he could ever say in response to that. But it made him cry.

"Sometimes I wish. It is unangelic, but I wish. We watched, as Michael cast our brother down, and we watched as Michael pulled all of his sympathizers from our ranks, and threw them down, and we heard Gabriel go, and then our Father changed us and we went to war. I was good at war. Sometimes I wish. I wish that I was not good at war. And did not know those words, or what fear and silence and anger felt like. Sometimes I wish I had never known anything else, too, though; had never known that there was a before. What happens? What happens," Cas asked, "when there is no one left who believes in me?"

Jimmy was crying his metaphysical eyes out, and he wasn't even sure of all of the reasons why, though he kept himself as still and quiet about it as possible. Even so, he tightened his grip again, under coat and arm and wing, and fought with his own entirely drunken, dazed awareness to give an answer to, at least, the last part of that.

"That can never happen to you," he said, as clearly as he could, to the angel tucked under his chin and up against his heart. "That could never happen to you. Maybe God, maybe the others. But not you. Because of me."

There was a long silence there, where he thought for sure Cas had finally given in and slid out of awareness. But then, quiet and close, he just said, "Because in the clearing stands a boxer."

"Because in the clearing stands a boxer," Jimmy echoed.

He was still crying when they both went under.

 

 

 

For the third time, Cas woke screaming; for the third time, Jimmy was there to calm him back down.

The bottle of apple brandy remained intact. Neither of them mentioned that it was because Cas was losing the power behind his voice.

There wasn't anything to do at that point, ragged and half drunk and half hungover and still wrecked, but to try to keep going. Even if neither of them knew exactly where they were going or what they were doing. Jimmy cracked the bottle open -- like it would make a difference now -- and worked on it while Cas listened to almost an hour's worth of voicemail from Sam, each message landing harder and harder on the angel's already frayed nerves. The messages themselves weren't bad; attempts to be supportive at first, research information next, updates on their progress, that sort of thing.

But feeling like this, like the world should not really be allowed to keep turning, it was a little like being rubbed with a cheese grater. Jimmy wished for nothing more than a big, warm pile of blankets somewhere dry, and he had a feeling Cas would go for the same.

The last one was, _"Cas, hey, uh, it’s me. So we are in Blue Earth, Minnesota and, um, we could use a little help. I... hope you get this."_

 _I do not wish to hear his voice again anytime soon,_ Cas said, waspish; in fact, Jimmy was the only one so far who had escaped the angel's still-pickled, rather uncharitable thoughts, and that may have only been because he was the one holding the brandy. _Must I go?_

 _Yeah, I think we probably should._ Jimmy didn't want to point out that the Apocalypse was still on, even if God was a no show; picking at those still bleeding wounds wouldn't do either of them any good. _If nothing else, you can filch enough water while you're there to maybe combat the hangover_.

 _Mm,_ was Cas's only answer.

He still didn't move, though, until Jimmy had finished the bottle of apple brandy.

 _You should sleep,_ Cas said, despite the fact that they'd just spent however many hours (it was getting towards sunset now) passed out helplessly in a forest. And despite his incredibly pissy mood, it was a warm offer.

 _Maybe. Will you be okay?_ Jimmy asked, capping the bottle so they could throw it away somewhere, and trying not to wince at the thought of the sheer number of bottles they didn't, in their mission to get as blown away as possible.

 _I'll manage._ It was, at least, an honest answer.

Jimmy took a breath, sinking back from any control over their shared form. _Be careful, Cas. Wake me if you need me,_ he said, and marvelled for a moment just at the amount of time that had passed where he could say that and know it would be listened to.

 _I will. Rest well, Jimmy,_ Cas answered, before covering Jimmy back up in the warm safety of sleep.

 

 

 

Of course, given their shared luck, Jimmy snapped back to consciousness because they were writhing on some foreign floor in agony.

It turned out it was a targeted spell -- later, Cas told him one he had not heard since the war, some two thousand years prior -- and it probably wouldn't have affected Jimmy at all if not for the fact that he and Cas were still shining each others' light. Cas still with part of Jimmy's soul powering him, Jimmy having picked up the some of the cast-off of Castiel's grace over time, like dust settling.

It also turned out that it would have probably crippled Cas a whole lot worse had it not been for Jimmy. It was still pretty bad, though. Even the next day, riding next to Sam in a stolen car, sore and stiff and still aching from the hangover and the spell, they weren't feeling very well.

Sam, however, was feeling worse.

Jimmy didn't even need to prompt Cas to say, "I'm sorry. For yesterday. I was..." he paused, trying to find the right words. "...unduly impatient."

Sam's hazel eyes were narrowed on the road, and it hurt like Hell to look at him. His mouth was tight, and he refused to look over; Jimmy thought it was probably more because he'd break if he did, than because he was still angry with them. "It's okay," he said, swallowing. "I get it."

Probably better in this moment, given where Dean was going, than most could. "Even so," Cas said, "I apologize. It was uncalled for, both my snapping at you and my calling you an abomination."

"It's technically the truth," Sam said, mouth twitching in the briefest, brittle smile. He reached up and palmed his hair out of his eyes, then sank a little into the seat, finally. "No, I get it, Cas. We're okay. We all have bad days."

"A run of them, lately."

"Yeah." Sam finally glanced over; hurting, but the sympathy was there. That was the moment Jimmy remembered Sam trying to stall Cas back when they first heard about Joshua, and the moment that he loved Sam for it, too. Then Sam looked back out at the road again, squeezing the steering wheel. "He'll listen. I mean, I know he's messed up, I know-- I get it, this is bad, it's like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. But Dean will listen."

Cas didn't answer that; Jimmy could feel his tentative hope, though, that Dean would. That if nothing else, the support of him and Sam would be enough to walk Dean back from the edge of the cliff he was standing on. Jimmy was less sure. When it came to Dean, Jimmy was always less sure. But he didn't reach out to say anything to squish that little hope.

"Wanna put some music on?" Sam asked, nodding to the radio.

Cas was a little surprised, and more touched. "I thought-- ah, the driver picked the music?"

"I'm not Dean," Sam said, with a shrug, eyes full as the car chewed up the miles. "Go for it."

Jimmy couldn't help but smile, when Cas picked a station playing Solsbury Hill.


	19. XIX.

**XIX.**

**2012**

"They'll heal, they'll heal," Samandiriel kept saying, voice split in ways that nearly negated his attempted reassurances, and every time he said it, Jimmy wanted to go beat something to death. 

Naomi was on the top of the list, right now.

"Shhhh, kid, shhhh," Caius said, mindlessly soothing the wounded angel he was carrying, a soft sound that had become so repetitive that they both became the refrain of Jimmy's life. Even if it had only been a few days.

Jimmy was painting in his own soul stuff, the most powerful magic he had access to up here, dragging up every memory he could of the sigils and spells he had learned from Cas, and that he had learned from Ash, and that might just keep them from all being captured. But even he knew that without Samandiriel, they were practically sitting ducks. He and Caius could run, could carry the angel, but eventually exhaustion would overcome them and that would be it.

"C'mon, Novak," Caius said, wrapping his wings tighter around Samandiriel, who had mercifully fallen quiet again. "I can practically smell them."

The modified heavenly banishing sigil was nearly finished, glowing brilliant blue and white, with just a trace of Cas's gold in it. Jimmy knotted his jaw, looping the last line up, before using Samandiriel's blade to slide across his palm. "Done. C'mere."

Caius came over, and he looked pale and freaked out, though his eyes were as sharp and intent as ever. "This won't hurt him, right?"

"It might," Jimmy said, honestly, looking at the angel. He took an entirely precious moment to slide in and drop a kiss on Samandiriel's forehead in apology, before looking up to meet Caius's eyes again. "But they'll hurt him a lot worse."

Caius worked his jaw, glaring, and then just nodded. And as Jimmy got his uncut hand locked around Samandiriel's wrist, Caius just whispered, "Sorry, kiddo."

Neither of them got a chance to hear if there was a reply; Jimmy slapped his palm against his sigil, and felt the sharp, disorienting burn when the angel was banished and flung across Heaven, and them with him.

 

 

 

They came up with three viable plans, before they left no where; all three of them had been gone over by a former trickster and a soldier's vessel and a current angel, and all three of them were balanced and cautious and clever, and all three of them failed so utterly that Jimmy thought maybe God was paying him back for the number of times that Jimmy called Him a prick.

They had been on the lam now for the better part of a month since leaving their shelter, and even no where was blocked to them now.

Where they were even getting that many angels to pursue them was baffling. Samandiriel was devastated; he, of all of the angels Jimmy heard tell of, was well-loved and well-connected, and it was one of his own closest sisters who ended up calling Naomi while Samandiriel was poking around for intelligence to plan their next moves to stay ahead of their pursuers. Apparently, while they were hiding out, Naomi had been strengthening her forces, and while there were still other alliances and factions, she had become something of the de facto ruler of Heaven for now.

They all became far more careful; Samandiriel had fled, and managed to dodge those chasing him, before returning to Jimmy and Caius looking truly _spooked_.

For the first time -- it really was the first time -- the last relatively pure angel in Heaven had to manifest his blade. And even though Jimmy had slipped easily into the same soldier mode he'd had with Cas, he had to take a moment to mark the true wretchedness of it. That it was necessary. That it was Samandiriel. Everything.

Caius took to fighting some better; just like Gabriel, when pressed to protect what he loved, he was dangerous. More than once, Jimmy was put in mind of a great eagle, talon and beak and ferocity, and no times moreso than when Samandiriel landed in front of them, messily and crying out, with slashed and torn wings and two angels in pursuit. The businesslike way he dispatched one with Samandiriel's sword was chilling; the way Jimmy managed to sneak up and grab the other and hold him for a split-second for the blade no better. Both died in their own realm.

"I know what she's done," Samandiriel had babbled, in pain and having no real idea how to handle the pain, slipping between languages until Caius managed to get him up and soothed enough to stick with one, "I know, I know, what she's done, oh, Father, oh no."

Jimmy had clenched his jaw. Wished he had tears. Hated God.

And then they started running again.

 

 

 

They landed in a heap, and the sound Samandiriel made was so bad that it made Jimmy wish he could puke; Caius immediately did what he could to move Samandiriel into a more comfortable position, and Jimmy immediately went to painting around the cracks, this time protective sigils that would buy them a few hours, if they were lucky. He didn't even bother to see what kind of terrain they were on.

The banishing sigil, though, had been his big gun. Using it to move them, not the angels following them. To fling them away from their last known position into something no one knew; it was risky, they could land right in their enemy's lap, but Jimmy considered it to be an acceptable risk. Calculating the number of angels left in Heaven after the most recent war, versus how huge Heaven actually was, factoring in that it was their home turf and not his, and he took his chances.

When he was barely awake, he would automatically turn his thoughts to Cas and go to ask what their next move should be, and then he would remember that this time, he was on his own trying to save those he cared for, including Cas himself. In moments, he was sharing a foxhole with his angel, and in moments, he was so lonely he almost couldn't stand it.

He knew, he knew now, what Cas had felt like when he was fighting Raphael, alone in every way that truly mattered and trying desperately to save what he loved, on Earth and in Heaven.

Someone (who was not God) have mercy on their souls and grace.

"We're going to have to come up with some other idea. We can't keep running," he said, even as he painted and painted, swift sure strokes around the glowing edges of the cracks. "Samandiriel won't be able to take that again, I don't think."

Caius had settled the angel as well as possible, and got up and got to work on his own spellwork, alongside Jimmy. "We need a fortress. Somewhere defensible with an escape hatch."

Both of them would have gone to Earth at this point. But the angel who could have taken them was hurt too badly to now, and there was nothing they could do but give him time to heal. They couldn't even bandage the wounds; it would do no good. They couldn't gather what they needed to summon help if Adrasteia would have been willing to give it, and they couldn't move around half so efficiently as they had.

"They'd lay siege," Jimmy said, but he wasn't against the idea. "I don't know any spells at all that would keep angels out of any part of Heaven, that's the problem. This is their domain."

Gabriel had been an independent thinker; a clever thing, but he had never actually spent time on a Heavenly battlefield. Caius knew plenty of pagan magic, but none of it could be initiated in Heaven without Earthly ingredients, and since they couldn't get those, they were in all kinds of trouble. Jimmy knew more battlefield magic than any human had a right to; part of it left over from some of Castiel's memories still in his head, part of it from actually being taught it while they were together on Earth, but even he was woefully undereducated to wage a two human/one angel war on the tattered remains of the Host.

Which left human ingenuity, and Jimmy wasn't sure he was capable of much more than he had already used.

"You know, we were really damn good at keeping ourselves hidden, down there," Caius said, sliding down a few feet to start the next set of spells. "We could change forms, we could double ourselves or triple ourselves, all kinds of things. It wouldn't do any good here, those assholes can see our true selves, but I keep thinking decoy anyway."

"Like a distraction." Jimmy didn't slow his own spellwork, even though he could hear Samandiriel starting to stir out of the catatonic state angels seemed to slide into when they were hurt badly enough. Cas had sometimes done the same thing when it came to the worst emotional knockdowns; a kind of coping mechanism. Or lack of one. Everything in him wanted to turn and comfort the angel currently with them, but he kept working anyway.

"Yup."

Being under the gun had definitely forced him and Caius to get along. In their entirely too rare moments of downtime, they usually ended up leaning against one another, taking watches and guarding the other. A different foxhole than the last Jimmy lived in, but a similar feeling.

"I wonder if I could try dream walking again," Jimmy said, shivering slightly at the thought of being that vulnerable. But he was back to a wall right now. "Dean or Sam. I think I could recreate the spell Ash hacked. But it wipes me out, and I'm not sure what they could do."

"Summon Adrasteia for us," Caius said, eying Jimmy. "Duh."

Jimmy blinked back for a moment. "Huh." And then he chewed it over as he moved onto the next spell. "Guess you're smarter than you look."

"Kiss my ass."

"Bare it."

Caius smirked, not looking away from his own work. "Tease."

 

 

 

There was apparently some mercy in Heaven, though Jimmy wasn't counting on it lasting.

Their protective spells held longer than a few hours. Long enough to fortify them, this time. Long enough for Caius to drop, going from awake to asleep with the speed and efficiency of a foot soldier dropping after a long road march. Long enough for Samandiriel to gather himself together, even though he was still in enough pain to split his voice, and talk with some coherence.

Jimmy was ridiculously proud of him, even as he cursed the fact that Samandiriel had to go through it at all.

"The angels who weren't with her before and are now," Samandiriel said, head pillowed on Jimmy's shoulder and wings spread painstakingly out wide over them both to hopefully give them a chance to knit, "they're-- damaged. I think she's cutting into them. Not like punishment, but cutting away their will."

Jimmy's lip curled into a snarl without him realizing it, just at the _thought_ , but his hand never stilled from where he was petting the angel's head and neck, soft and soothing. It was stomach-churning; somehow, one of God's abandoned children managed to come up with an even more horrifying idea than outright _torture_. "How is that even possible? How would any of them stand still for it?"

"I don't know," Samandiriel said, a fine tremor running through him. "I don't know. I think--" He stopped, then plowed on, "I think I would rather die fighting."

Jimmy stared up at the ceiling of the hunting cabin they'd ended up sheltered in, doing his best to breathe steadily through his nose. "It won't come to that. I've got about half of that spell worked out, I just need to remember the rest, and I need to get my strength up before I try it. But it won't come to that. It can't."

"I'm not afraid," Samandiriel said, patting Jimmy's chest in a way that made his heart hurt; Cas, all over again, this time out of his mind and telling Jimmy to hush and let him talk, because he didn't know if he'd be able to later. Samandiriel went on, "I'm not afraid. I was only on the battlefield at the end, and only as a messenger then; I never had to fight before. I think I can, though."

"I wish you didn't have to," Jimmy answered, throat tight.

There was a long silence there, and then Samandiriel gingerly shifted, looking up at Jimmy; pain in his eyes, but that serenity again, too, that ancient wisdom. "I told Castiel no, when he wished me to fight for him. I don't regret telling him no, but I will never forget that he gave me the choice, and respected that choice. I have a choice again, now. If it comes to it, I'll fight, and I'll die fighting if I can."

Jimmy looked down at him; grit his teeth, against the grief. Ached, for the pride. "Cas said something like that. About having the choice. Forever ago."

Samandiriel actually smiled. "He did?"

Jimmy nodded, looking back up at the ceiling. "I asked him once if he would go back to the choir, if he could undo it all and forget it all. He told me that..." He paused there, just to breathe again, before continuing, "He told me that he would have liked the choice to be a soldier -- that he thought, if he had the choice, he would have chosen to be a soldier, but that at least if he had the choice, he would have kept singing, too."

"My brother." Samandiriel settled his head again, voice wistful; love, embodied in sound. "He and Gabriel; so much heart they couldn't ever help but follow it, regardless of cost or reason. They are the only two I have ever known who could imagine for themselves, instead of inspire others to. Though they did that, as well." A beat. "I would go back, myself. If I could undo it, I would put us all back together, raising our voices in song. But there's no returning to that, so it's time to follow my own heart, instead."

"It won't come to that." Jimmy couldn't even let himself think it would. "It won't come to that," he repeated, not sure who he was trying to reassure.

"If it does, it does," Samandiriel said. "I can think of worse fates."

The real tragedy, as Jimmy Novak would come to know, was that Samandiriel ended up with the very worst of those fates.

The real triumph, if anyone could ever call it that, was that Samandiriel went down fighting before that and in his chosen battle never faltered, blazing courage right to the bitter end.

Jimmy wished, in the way only someone who knew war could, that they had killed him instead.


	20. XX.

**XX.**

**2010**

They landed smack in the middle of the Garden, tumbling head over heels, dazed and disoriented and sore and way too defenseless to be there; landed hard and finally came to a rest face up, gasping and disbelieving and stunned.

It was instant chaos around them; the voices of the angels immediately raised up louder than they had been in a long time, astonishment and then anger and then intent.

Dean had banished them.

Dean had banished them, knowing full well they were being hunted, back to Heaven.

Dean had banished them, knowing full well they were being hunted, back to Heaven so that he could go and say 'yes' to Michael.

It was red-hot rage that enabled Cas to fling himself out of the way of two of his brothers trying to latch onto him; to slide past one blade and three more sets of grappling hands, and then fold his battered wings and scream towards Earth, not even bothering to speak to his siblings, even in defiance.

Jimmy didn't say a thing, either. Not because he was afraid, not because he was intimidated. He didn't say a thing because whatever Dean got was coming to him, and that might have been the least Christian, most uncharitable moment of his life, but he didn't care. He had put up with watching Dean be nasty to Sam, to Bobby, to Cas; he had felt the slow boiling anger Cas had bubbling up as his tentative hope was snuffed out, the increasing sense of betrayal and abandonment from the last person outside of Jimmy that he had expected; he had felt his own rage at all of it, all of what they'd gone through, coming to an end like _this_ and then Dean had pulled this one last trick, banking on his angel's concern to hold despite the betrayal, and it could have gotten them killed.

And Dean, if he even knew about it, might have done it _anyway_.

So, Jimmy didn't say anything, when Cas beat Dean in that alley. He metaphorically stood back, hands raised, indulging in the entirely grim satisfaction that finally -- _finally_ \-- Dean was getting a taste of his own bitter medicine.

He just wished that Cas hadn't felt guilty about it later. He sure didn't.

 

 

 

They were beyond punch drunk now. It made Jimmy think of that old Jack London book ( _Call of the Wild?_ ) where the dog had been beaten so badly that he only felt the blows he was taking as far away thumps, distant and not even painful anymore. That was where he and Cas were now; that space where they had been battered so hard and for so long that when Sam came up with the plan to go and get Adam, and to take _Dean_ with them, Jimmy didn't even think to protest Cas being ready to potentially sacrifice them for it. If Michael managed to use Adam, or if Dean said yes, the world might end anyway. Sam could hold out, they both thought that, but Lucifer wasn’t going to just sit back and wait around.

So, they might as well throw down their cards on this one hand. If for nothing else than to buy Sam a chance, regardless of Dean’s potential stupidity. Sam would go anyway. Best not to let him go alone.

To both of their minds, possibly going down with a blade in hand seemed the natural thing to do by now. Fitting, if nothing else. That wasn't to say they didn't have a plan, didn’t intend to try to survive. It was a suicidally reckless plan, yeah, but they had one.

 _Think this'll scar?_ Jimmy asked, as Cas took a boxcutter to their chest. He could feel a distant pain from it, from the sharpness of it, but he knew Cas was using every bit of his concentration to keep them from feeling most of it.

 _Maybe._ Cas was past his rage, into the calm space behind it; the tactician, the warrior, coming up with the best plan to take out as many of his enemies as he could in one shot. _If it does, I'm sorry._

_I'm not. If we live through it, the scars are kind of a small price to pay._

Cas quirked the corner of their mouth up in a dry little smile. _Yeah._

It still delighted Jimmy when Castiel got informal; it had been happening more and more, but it still felt like a rare treat even now. He just watched as Cas carved a banishing sigil into their skin, sure and steady. _Has anyone ever done anything like this before?_

_Not that I know of._

_Do angels have a patent office? We should apply for patents, for all the things we come up with, if we live._

Cas grinned a little more, before he managed to stuff it down; gallows humor, maybe, but still humor. _Indeed._

Sam was watching them in fascinated horror, which was probably not helped by seeing Cas grinning to himself as he was slicing and dicing here. Dean was not watching them in something that looked suspiciously like guilt. Jimmy paid them no mind, and neither did Castiel; once the decision had been made, there just wasn't much more to say about any of it to the Winchesters. So, all love aside, they did as they had been doing now for near a year and leaned on one another and turned to face the oncoming storm; Cas standing forward, blade in hand, Jimmy behind him, ready to hold him steady.

"Are you-- are you--" Sam couldn't seem to finish the sentence, the concern in his eyes almost overpowering, as he stared at them carving themselves like a macabre art project.

"I'm fine, Sam," Cas said, gruff but easy, and finished; Jimmy crinkled their nose briefly, because that last few strokes of the blade _hurt_ , but then, blood running down their skin, he was the one who started buttoning their shirt back up carefully, keeping it loose so that it wouldn't stick. "This should clear the way."

"Look, Cas," Dean said, finally looking at them. But apparently that was all he managed to come up with; his eyes were a mix of things even Jimmy couldn't quite figure out, hard and guilty and defiant and maybe even sad.

Jimmy felt Cas take the blade into their hand and slide it across their opposite palm, and felt a number of things he couldn't figure out himself when Cas met that gaze, even as he made them bleed, with some of the hard and unyielding determination that they had back in the beginning.

It was Dean who looked away. And when he went into the warehouse, Cas didn't look back.

 

 

 

Of course, given their shared luck, they managed to _lose their body_. Entirely.

They hit that sigil carved into them, and then they went one way, Jimmy Novak's mortal form went a different way, and given that they had just done something suicidally reckless, when Jimmy came around to find his angel standing in front of him with a blade, wings flared in menace and facing down a _reaper_ , he almost wanted to laugh.

He was so used to seeing his own soul-glow when they were in their no-space together that he was able to put it together pretty quickly that he was disembodied right now, instead of there.

Well, that and the reaper.

"You will not come near him," Cas said, growling in Jimmy's voice, raking in his own.

The reaper was a younger male, or looked it; depending on the layer, he was made of yellow smoke and light, drifty and oddly pretty in a really terrifying way, or he was a handsome black guy in a black suit, or he was literally a reaper, black robe and scythe, skeletal. Jimmy stuck with the easiest; besuited. "Relax, angel, he's not on my list," the reaper said, leaning to the side to eye Jimmy. "I was just curious."

Castiel was not mollified, glaring back at the reaper like a raptor watching a mouse. "Now that you've satisfied it, be gone."

Jimmy got to his feet, there. His mind was reeling, trying to figure out how the hell they went from sharing a body in Van Nuys to standing together wherever they were without one. "I'm not dead?" he asked the reaper.

"No. Well, you're kind of gray area, but not technically." The reaper seemed wholly unfazed by the fact that he had an angel ready to gut him. "Not on my list, not my problem."

"What do you mean?" Jimmy stepped forward, reaching out and pressing a hand against Cas's wing, a nudge to stand down. 

It earned him an irritated look, but after a moment, Cas folded his wings back and relaxed back away from his 'smite-ready' posture, if barely. "Not technically?" he asked. Even if it came out more of a demand.

"Your body's still alive and it’s not damaged too badly for you to get back into it." The reaper looked between them, amused. "You make quite a pair. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. You two are all over each other, aren't you? Did the rules change in Heaven?"

"I tire of this," Cas said, flatly, demanifesting his blade. Though Jimmy knew better than anyone just how quickly he could have it in hand again if he needed it. "Either help or go."

"Can you help?" Jimmy asked, figuring maybe tact would go where blunt demands would fail to. "How do we get back to my body?"

The reaper rolled his eyes in an all-too-human gesture. "He knows how. Though, angel, you're looking just a little on the faint side right now," he said, eying Cas again, thoughtfully. "I'm not so sure you'll even make it back into a vessel, at this rate." Then he looked at Jimmy again, head tipped the other way. "You, on the other hand, have a nice healthy glow. A little angelic, too. You should make it back, if they don't take your body off of life support first."

Jimmy steadfastly didn't look over at his angel at that, just got a grip on the ethereal overcoat sleeve and gave it a light 'shut up' shake. "How could you help?"

"It's easy." The reaper lifted a hand and the next thing Jimmy knew, he could see a-- it was almost like a thread, strands of blue and white light, thin and delicate, streaming off into the haze of sunlight and humidity. "Follow the trail back to yourself. He should be able to do this himself, but..." the reaper shrugged.

At this point, Cas side-eyed Jimmy in a manner that could only be, 'Can I smite him, please?' Jimmy didn't figure, though, that was such a good idea. "Thanks," he just said.

There was a long, awkward moment, then the reaper sighed. "Yeah, you're welcome. Have fun, looks like you've got a nice long walk ahead of you." He waved his hand in the air. "Back to work. Can't wait to tell the others about this, though."

"Uh, sure." Jimmy nodded, plastering on a thin-lipped little smile, eyebrows up. "Thanks again."

The reaper grinned back, and then vanished.

Jimmy immediately rounded on Cas, tugging on his coat. "What does he mean, not make it back?" he demanded, eyeballing the angel. Who didn't look transparent or anything; he still had his wings, he still...

...barely had any of the gold and blue and silverwhite glow of his grace on him. Jimmy could even make out the actual color of his feathers past it; the gunmetal primaries and secondaries, the paler, variant coverts, the white axillaries. They looked more like bird wings than angel wings right now, and Jimmy actually reached out and tugged Cas into extending one, much to the angel's increasing annoyance.

"Maybe it's the sunlight," Jimmy said to himself, staring hard for that ethereal glow, before letting go of the wing so Cas could snap it back to folded.

"We need to get back," was all Cas said, irritation vanishing, shaking his head.

It was as they started walking that Jimmy realized it was the first time they hadn’t been in the same body together since Cas had been hauled back for some Heavenly ‘persuasion.’ That he couldn't just reach out and get a handle on what Cas was feeling. That he couldn't read the tone of the angel's thoughts.

That if Cas disappeared now, Jimmy couldn't just sing him back or talk him back.

And despite not feeling any cold, or really anything, Jimmy still shivered.

 

 

 

Night made it worse, not better. Because Jimmy could see that glow, and see just how weak it was. But even worse yet, he could watch the little tiny particles of lit grace break free and drift up off of Cas like deadly fireflies, something that would be beautiful if not for the fact that he knew it meant his angel was dying.

"I have no soul," Cas finally said, after hours where they followed the trail in silence, and Jimmy got it, got it better than he had ever gotten it before, just how tired Castiel actually was. It didn't show up in expression, it wasn't even because of his dissipating grace, but it radiated anyway. Jimmy wasn't even sure how he could see it or sense it; Cas was still carrying himself with squared shoulders and didn't falter in step. But he knew anyway. "This is," Cas said, gesturing loosely to his own form, "I suppose you could call it consciousness, spirit. I'll hold onto it as long as I can, you needn't worry."

"You've just spent how long with me and you're telling me not to worry?" Jimmy shook his head, a little incredulous. "Not gonna happen, Cas."

Cas huffed an annoyed breath. "Worrying does us no good. I wish you'd put it to rest."

"I wish you'd stop being such a lemming," Jimmy answered, without much thought.

"A lemming?"

"Suicidal rodent."

That was enough to ruffle Cas's feathers and he stopped walking, scowling at Jimmy with something between offense and ire. "I am neither suicidal nor a rodent," he said, leaning on the rumble of his borrowed human voice, instead of the pretty harmonics of his own. "And lemmings are not suicidal; that's a common myth," he added, more peevishly.

"You and I just walked into an abandoned factory to face off with five fully powered angels, after carving ourselves up like a roast chicken." Jimmy stopped as well, just so he could study Cas's face for a moment; he resolutely didn't shift perception to see Cas in his most nebulous form, for fear of what that would look like right now. "I mean, I went too, so it's not like I don't get why. But this--" he gestured, then sighed out, dropping his head for a moment. "I'm just worried," he finished, looking back up. "Tell me I don't have a reason to be."

Cas eyed him back, owlishly. "We're currently over two hundred miles from your body; I can’t fly us there. Michael may well be walking the Earth, which means that Lucifer will redouble his efforts on Sam, and while I believe Sam will hold firm, the cost to his health and mental wellbeing would be immeasurable. Lucifer, too, will not give up and may yet find himself another host in Sam's stead, if a less suitable one. Your body may perish, leaving you a true ghost." He paused there, softened, and quirked his eyebrows up a little, a clear attempt at reassurance. "I only mean that I’m the last thing you should be worried about."

Despite himself, Jimmy grinned a little. "It doesn't really work that way. You worry about the 'big picture.'" He put air quotes around it, but didn't bother to elaborate on the gesture despite the curious headtilt Cas gave him. "I worry about _you_."

"You worry about the 'big picture' too," Cas answered, trying out the air quotes for himself, which made Jimmy laugh despite his anxiety. Then he just shook his head. "There's nothing we can do about it, but keep going."

Jimmy felt some of -- though by no means all of -- the anxious tension fade; for a moment, he was reminded of looking over the wreckage of Ellen and Jo's last stand, and his answer there was the same one. "Yeah," he finally said, taking a breath he had no need to take just for the phantom sensation of it, gesturing to his head. "I'm not used to..."

"I'm not, either." Cas surprised him, then; stepped over and briefly pressed his forehead against Jimmy's, steadying them both by a hand on the sleeve of Jimmy's identical coat, the gesture awkward but heartfelt. "But we'll be fine," he said, his own voice more than his human one, and then he stepped back and started off along the glowing trail again, leading the way through tall, marshy grasses that didn't bend to accommodate him. "Tell me when you want to stop and rest."

"You do the same," Jimmy said, after a moment, and followed.

 

 

 

It was a beautiful world, once Jimmy was able to stop waiting for Cas to disappear on him and actually look at it. He couldn't feel the warm weight of the air around him, but the stars were spectacular, and he still had enough of an angel’s perspective even without sharing skin with one that he could see the traces of things he wouldn't be able to see even as a spirit; high above, the faint trail of solar radiation winding through the sky. Truer colors, to the stars, than he could remember seeing with his own eyes alone. The moon, when it rose, and the sharper details on it.

But that wasn't all. Because he could see all a soul could, too, with the skill to look between the layers his disembodied status allowed him to.

He had gotten so used to seeing the layers of the world around him that he didn't even think to appreciate it anymore. Viewed them with tactical calculation, viewed them as useful for what he could glean of them (where not to draw a sigil, where to target a spell, how best to approach a bit of spellwork invisible to human eyes), but not as something to marvel at anymore. Most of that was bleed-over from Cas, who could see much more and who had never not seen it. But some of it was just because there wasn't so much time, when you were fighting the end of the world, to look at what you were fighting for.

Now, trailing behind his angel, over roads and through towns and across wetlands and into fields, in the low not-yet-light of an approaching dawn, he could see some of the magic again.

There were fairies. Little bright things, mostly. There were occasionally reapers, all of whom were on their way somewhere, but still paused and eyed Jimmy and Cas like they were an oddity. (Jimmy supposed they were; disembodied soul of a vessel, fading angel, not something you see every day.) There were _elementals_ , which took Jimmy's breath away, because he had never been able to see them before.

"If I have the ability, I’ll teach you how to see them for yourself," Cas had said, referring to whenever they made it back. Jimmy was pretty sure Cas wouldn't have the ability, but the offer touched him.

There were so many things, living in this world, parallel and unseen. So much magic, delicately woven; some dark, some not. Jimmy even wished, briefly, that he could show this to Dean and Sam, which was a thought that caught him by surprise. But to be able to show them that not everything was evil, not everything was hopelessness and despair; that some of it was beautiful, existing only layers away from them at any given moment.

He was so caught up in the magic that he didn't pay much attention to the actual geography, until Cas stopped and Jimmy pulled himself up just before running into him. "Look," the angel said, tipping his chin up in a nod ahead.

Across the road, there was sand and dune grass; beyond that, the Gulf, shimmering in blue moonlight. And dancing across the water, a few dozen elementals just offshore, shifting forms, chasing the peaks of waves, diving into troughs -- from dolphin, to flying fish, to pelican, to gull, to dive dive dive, then back up again, in teal and blue and violet, shifting into ultraviolet. 

A kingfisher diving, then rising.

Jimmy didn't need to breathe, but the phantom breath left him in a whoosh anyway. _"Oh..."_ he said, in that rush, hand to his chest. "Oh," he said again, vision swimming in phantom tears to go with his phantom breathing.

"Creation begets creation," Cas said, quietly, beside him. "I have never understood how my brothers and sisters couldn't see it. The beauty of it. I have watched this world since before time was measured, and I've always found something beautiful to cast my eyes upon in it."

Jimmy watched the elementals. Swimming things. Flying things. Free of human concern or angelic mandate, they acted without morality or malice, living in a single moment nothing but the joy of play over the water. "Even now," he said, because it wasn't a question, just a statement. To himself. To Cas. To the world. To their wholly battered hearts and exhausted minds and broken faith.

"Even now," Cas echoed, and Jimmy could feel the angel looking at him in unguarded affection.

He fell asleep after the sun came up, tucked invisible behind someone's weathered boat shack, sheltered under a wing with Cas guarding over him, peering steadily off into the rising day. 

Watching the world he was dying to save.


	21. XXI.

**XXI.**

**2012**

"What was his favorite," Samandiriel had asked, "of all of those songs you used to sing together?"

Jimmy had thought, as they crawled their way through the heaven of a pre-civilization woman, about how to answer that question; not because he didn't know the answer, but because he didn't know that he wanted to share it. But he looked at the angel with half-healed wings, still hurting, still struggling on despite it, and he told the truth. "The Boxer. The Boxer was his favorite."

Samandiriel had only nodded, looking thoughtful and a little proud. Then he smiled. "They called themselves Tom and Jerry, before they went by Simon and Garfunkel."

For the first time in a long time, and for the very last time that he would before the end, Jimmy had found himself laughing in joy.

They lost Samandiriel a day later.

 

 

It had been hard going, putting Ash's hacked dream walking spell back together, but given how pressed they were by their pursuers, Jimmy managed it. No part of him really wanted to weaken himself, and step his consciousness away from his soul, but there weren't many choices and every single move they made narrowed their options further. Samandiriel was healing, but no where near well enough to fly them to Earth; he hurt every time he took them into the outer belt still, and it hurt to ask it of him. Caius could have maybe used the dream walking spell, but the Winchesters was far less likely to listen to someone who was a spitting image of Gabriel than they were someone who was a spitting image of Castiel.

So, when Jimmy closed his eyes and initiated the spell, he did so with fear chewing a hole in his gut and the sense that everything was going to come crashing down on them at any given moment. He latched onto the thin, faint trails Sam had left in Heaven and he grasped them and he reached, focusing everything he had on the tall, hazel-eyed kid he’d fought the end of the world with.

And for once… for once, it _worked_.

"Cas?"

Sam Winchester's voice sounded a little ragged and drowsy, as he stared at Jimmy; the scene shifted fluidly from a bedroom where a dog was curled up on the bed, to the inside of what looked like a laboratory, then to some nightmarish scene of darkness.

"No," Jimmy answered, shuddering already from the drain he could feel. "No, it's me; Jimmy Novak. Sam, I need your help."

He had tried to reach Dean; it would have been easier, having done it once already. But there was nothing for his spell to latch onto. He should have probably pulled up stakes there and bolted, because opening a connection to the outside like that, human to human, was like sending up a signal flare, but in a moment of desperation, he had swiped Dean's name off of the spell and substituted Sam's, going back in.

Sam's dreamscape shifted again, somewhere outside where the sun was shining. He looked a little baffled. "You-- I thought that you were--"

"I'm dead," Jimmy said, and he couldn't help but think of when he was dream walking Dean. "Listen: I need you to try really hard to remember this dream, okay? Because I'm currently on the run in Heaven, and we're in deep trouble. There's a faction of angels trying to get their hands on Castiel, and they're trying to get their mitts on me to use me as leverage to do it. They're probably narrowing in on me as we speak. So, I need you to summon me up some backup."

"How-- wait. Dean and Cas, they're-- they're in Purgatory," Sam said, and again his dreamscape shifted to that nightmarish darkness again. "They took out Dick Roman, and got dragged into Purgatory."

Jimmy bit back a curse. Well, that explained why no one could find Cas. Still didn't solve his problem though. "I need you to research a ritual; I need you to summon the goddess Adrasteia. She goes by Nemesis, too," he plowed on, feeling the air shivering around him, feeling the core of him shivering, too. "Tell her that Castiel is in trouble and that I’m his friend, in Heaven, and that her sisters might be able to help her find me there, and most importantly, tell her I have an answer to her question of what happens, and that I need an ally. She'll know what I mean."

Sam looked a little wrecked. "I'll try. I can't-- I have a lot of nightmares, but I'll do my best."

Jimmy looked into Sam's eyes, and saw the earnestness there, and saw the heartbreak behind it, and as much as he wanted to hammer on the point, he couldn't. "All I can ask. Hang in there, Sam."

"You--

 

 

\--have to run!" Samandiriel sounded oddly sharp, and Jimmy found himself landing back against Caius without even having a moment to catch his bearings.

"Hell no, I'm not going to run," Caius snarled back, wielding the blade he had taken from one of the two angels he had killed before, shoving Jimmy off to the side. "If you think I'm letting you throw yourself in front of the wrecking crew, kiddo, you've got another thing coming."

"Purgatory," Jimmy managed to gasp. "Dean and Cas are in Purgatory."

"You need to go find them," Samandiriel said, wings arched offensively; ruffled, damaged, scarred. He already had his own sword in hand, and he was blazing light and determination, an almost joyous defiance. "This is my choice; I'll hold them off!"

_\--I'll hold them all off,_ Jimmy remembered, even as he shook his head and opened his mouth--

\--and a dozen angels came through the cracks, shattering Jimmy's and Caius's spellwork like glass, bits of glow falling and disappearing; they resolved in front of Samandiriel, already ready to fight, and Samandiriel didn't hesitate, he half-turned to the image of his brother, to Caius, and snapped a hand out, touching two fingers to Caius's forehead and letting the not-man-not-angel crumble; on instinct more than anything, Jimmy managed to catch him, and then he looked up--

\--and Samandiriel gave him the shortest, sweetest little smile, moving his hand quicker than a snake strike to touch Jimmy's forehead next.

"Go with my love."

When Jimmy got flung into the outer belt with Caius, it wasn't the maddening disorientation that he screamed for.

 

 

The outer belt spit them out somewhere else. He didn't even know where.

If Jimmy had a throat, a proper body, he would have lost his voice before he stopped screaming.

He managed to drag himself up on hands and knees, shivering and panting. He managed to climb to his feet. He staggered. He screamed again, through locked teeth, the only expression of pain he was allowed in this Godless realm. He fisted both hands in his hair and he curled half on himself, and he screamed and he screamed and he screamed, every bit of pain and rage, every bit of _loss_ , every bit of everything wrong with Samandiriel being left back there to fight and hopefully die, every bit of everything wrong with all of this, all of this, that this could ever be allowed to happen.

Everything wrong. Every single thing.

Tears would have been so much better.

He screamed long past when he would have lost his voice, and then he stopped. And he panted. And he huffed half a hysterical laugh, flinging his hand away from his head.

He turned his eyes up.

_"You heartless, sick son of a bitch!"_ Jimmy Novak raged, to a false sky, to an absent God, because there was nothing else he could do. "You make them, and you break them, and you don't even have the fucking courage and decency to come back and save them?! Fuck you! Fuck you and whatever gutless chicken you rode in on, you hear me?!"

He had nothing else, but he gave all he had left.

And when Caius woke up, going from a moment of disorientation to horror and determination to go back, Jimmy wrestled him down. And when Caius tried to beat the shit out of Jimmy, Jimmy just took it and kept wrestling with the echo of the archangel, beaten by flying fists and wings, not really feeling it. And when Caius raged at him, calling him every name under the sun, he didn't answer.

And when Caius finally quit fighting, all that was left for him, too, was screaming.

And so, he did.


	22. XXII.

**XXII.**

**2010**

"I can't say that I'm not relieved."

Cas's voices were quiet over his head, and for that few moments between asleep and awake, Jimmy felt like they were back in one skin together again. Even the brush of stiff flight feathers shifting slightly against his leg didn't entire destroy the illusion; he knew what those wings felt like, and while he had never learned how to move them, he knew what they weighed (insubstantial mostly, except when they were hurting), he knew the motion and stretch of them, and he knew what it felt like to have pinions constantly brushing lightly against the backs of his legs.

_For what?_ he asked, inside of his own mind, but there wasn't an answer.

"Makes no difference to me, but in your position, I can't say I blame you," the reaper's voice said, easily.

Jimmy pried his eyes open, not particularly finding it odd anymore to wake up looking at the underside of his own chin, and turned his head enough to take in the reaper they had met the first day sitting cross-legged a handful of feet away. It probably should have surprised him or jolted him, but Castiel was relaxed -- one wing mostly covering Jimmy, and his hand resting loose over where Jimmy's heart would normally beat, thumb ticking the rhythm -- and that was enough to tell Jimmy that this conversation must have gone on long enough for the angel to back down from posturing defensively. That there was no danger.

"Morning. Or, afternoon actually," the reaper said, with a flash of a grin. "I was just telling your guardian angel there that Michael doesn't have his true vessel."

Jimmy blinked back at the reaper, then turned his head back up to find Cas pretending not to be grinning himself. "Dean said no? Really?"

"Apparently. I was beginning to suspect it, but I'm glad to have it confirmed," Cas answered, looking down at Jimmy, who had been using the angel's leg as a pillow every day for the last four now whenever they stopped for rest. Then Cas looked back up to the reaper, absently and awkwardly patting at Jimmy's chest. "Thank you."

The reaper shrugged, then leaned back on his hands. "No problem. I was in the neighborhood, figured I'd pass that on. Can't slack off too much, not even with my boss bound, but it's nice to take a break, talk something other than shop with folks."

"Do you know anything of what Lucifer has planned for your- ah, 'boss'?" Cas asked, giving the reaper the air quotes and making Jimmy chuckle to himself, resolving to someday down the line teach Cas how to properly apply those.

"Nope. I've got one job and that's it, so no one tells me anything. I only know about Michael because it was kind of a big deal." The reaper shook his head, then let it fall back in an unabashed moment of pleasure, soaking in the golden sunlight. Jimmy was jealous; he couldn't seem to feel pain or anything else right now, but he also couldn't feel the warmth of sunlight on his skin, either. "Everyone was talking about it."

"Any news you have would be welcome," Cas said, diplomatically.

"Haven't you gotten charming," the reaper replied, picking his head up again and offering a wink. Jimmy didn't even need to look to know the vaguely baffled look he was getting back. "I don't have any, except that you--" he said, to Jimmy, "--are still alive, bodily. I think you're in New Orleans."

"That's not too bad. I think we're in Alabama now," Jimmy said, finally making himself move; Cas obligingly shifted his wing away, though he left it unfolded. Apparently catching some of his own sunlight, given that he was casting a shadow right now, even if he was otherwise invisible to the rest of reality.

It was the strangest not-picnic Jimmy had ever seen; a reaper, relaxing in the sand with an angel and a disembodied soul, overlooking the Gulf. If he didn't miss having a body so much, he might have been happy staying there longer. "I don't suppose you could give us a lift?" he asked, even though he already had a good idea of the answer.

The reaper shook his head. "Sorry, man. Rules and all; I get in big trouble if I move a soul not on my list, and don't even let me tell you about all of the interdepartmental angel relation subclauses in my contract," he said, as he rose to his feet. "Hey, you mind answering a question, though? Just to satisfy my curiosity?"

"That depends upon the question," Cas said, mildly, looking up at the reaper.

"You--" the reaper pointed to Cas, "--have got a little human soul burn going on," he said, twirling his finger as a gesture. "His human soul burn," he continued, that finger turning now to Jimmy. "And you, that's not too shocking, the grace cast-off. But I've never once heard of it going the other way. So, what's with that?"

"You mean that's not normal?" Jimmy asked back, blinking innocently, and not failing to notice the vaguely puzzled look Cas wore at the not-quite-a-lie. "Huh."

"An angel running partly on human soul power? No. No, man, that is the exact opposite of normal," the reaper said, but he lifted his hands up. "I'd beg for an answer more, but I have to get back. But maybe I'll see you again."

"Maybe," Cas just said, rising to his own feet smoothly and shaking his wings out, before folding them back and offering Jimmy a hand up. "Thank you again, for the visit."

"No problem." The reaper grinned, shaking his head, and then he vanished.

"We just break all of the rules, don't we?" Jimmy asked, taking the help and standing, then pointlessly brushing himself and his clothes off, even though he wasn't substantial enough to pick any sand up.

"Apparently." Cas looked after where the reaper had gone, then waited until Jimmy had righted himself before starting off again. 

 

 

 

The process of moving through the world when you couldn't interact with it was peculiar, but not particularly bad in the strictest sense. Jimmy supposed he could learn to manipulate matter; in fact, if he put himself to it, he thought he'd probably be really decent at it. But mostly, their big concern was getting back to their body. He tended to hover over Cas a little like a mother hen; while the angel hadn't dimmed significantly since they started hiking their way across the Deep South, Jimmy still spent far too many long night hours watching Cas shedding grace for his own mental health.

Even after all of this time, Cas didn't quite understand being worried over. He tolerated it, mostly, but it confused and occasionally annoyed him, and Jimmy was kind enough to point out on more than one occasion that Cas was a giant hypocrite, because he tended to guard Jimmy just as much, to speak nothing of Cas's constant worry over the Winchesters. Usually that conversation silenced them both for an hour or two of sullenness or righteousness, depending on how it went, and then Jimmy would sing and despite all prickly self-possession, Cas would sing back. Or, a few times when Jimmy was hellbent on giving him the silent treatment, Cas would be the one to sing; this was how Jimmy figured out that Cas was a sap, when he wasn't being infuriatingly stoic, because there was nothing quite so sweet as having an angel sing Bridge Over Troubled Water for you.

Jimmy gave in and took Paul Simon’s part, when it came up, because how couldn’t he?

Cas could interact with the broader world; he wasn't disembodied, only disenvesseled, if that was a word. But given the risk of doing so even with fading grace, he kept himself blocked off from the layer of reality that humanity could see and interact with. Jimmy could only interact with Cas and presumably reapers; he couldn't even touch other spirits. Admittedly, he mostly didn't want to. They'd run into a few, and none of those friendly, though it never got to the point of battle -- most restless ghosts thought twice before going after an angel.

Despite it not being a bad trip, though, after a week Jimmy just wanted to be back in his body. Both of them back in his body. He liked the face-to-face interaction, because there still wasn't any replacement for looking someone in the eye. But he also missed just _knowing_. He missed the easy back-and-forth.

He wasn't the only one.

"It's very quiet," Cas said, as they were working their painstaking way across yet more bayou (and if Jimmy never saw swampland again, it would be too soon). They were just bedding down, somewhere near dawn, and he had his head cocked to the side, like he was listening hard for something.

Jimmy didn't really need to be sharing a skull with him to get what was going on; the Host had been an ever present chatter even he could occasionally listen to when he wanted to, and over the long months had gotten quieter and quieter.

If he felt isolated in his own mind right now, and that only because he'd gotten used to the constant mental back-and-forth they had going on, he couldn't really imagine how it would be to not quite hear the voices you had known for your entire existence. And even though he knew Cas actually did like occasionally tuning out of that constant presence enough to be something like alone, he never really was even then; their voices were only ever half a thought away.

Angels weren't really equipped for it; angels weren't equipped for a whole lot of things that this angel had to deal with.

It was little wonder, then, that Castiel would be willing to sit down and chat with a reaper. Or sing appeasement to Jimmy when he was given the silent treatment.

He was _lonely_.

"Yeah," Jimmy said, looking around at the endless stretch of mud and still water, or wild untamed growth; the constant buzz of insects and the sound of wildlife was there, and so were plenty of elementals, who seemed to gravitate to the natural surroundings. It wasn't really quiet at all, but that wasn't what Cas meant and so Jimmy just looked at him and held out an arm. "Come here."

Cas looked back at him, bemused. "I'm not in need of comforting."

_You idiot,_ Jimmy thought, somewhere between terribly amused at the self-deception and warmly affectionate for the same, but he just raised an eyebrow. "Come here."

After a moment (and maybe thinking about what kind of bizarre world it was when the vessel told the angel what to do, or maybe that was just Jimmy finding it endearingly ironic), Cas finally heaved out something of a put-upon sigh, settling down beside Jimmy and not even bothering to stiffen up when Jimmy wrapped around him. It took some coordination of various limbs, some feathered and some not, but eventually Jimmy had his angel's forehead against his own neck, and Cas pressed up to his chest, still and relaxed.

And Jimmy talked. He talked about things they'd already talked about before. He talked about things he never had brought up before, too. What it felt like, a shattering moment of helplessness and love when he first held Claire. What it felt like, when he heard tell that his father died. What it felt like, when he got his first car, an old beater he'd busted his ass earning the cash for. About how the heater didn't work half the time, and he literally used a clothes hanger to hold the muffler on. He talked about winter mornings those days, going to school as the sun was just cresting the horizon, and how he could feel that breathless anticipation of the future in those moments. Like his life was laid out and he could see the trail.

He talked; he talked about all of the thoughts he'd had, dreaming as a kid about what he'd someday be, and he talked about all the things he would never be, and he confessed his loves and confessed his fears. He talked long after the sun was up, long after he could feel the drowsiness settle on him like a blanket, over top the wings already half wrapped around him.

He talked until he was almost sure he was talking in his sleep, in the middle of the bayou, under the sun he couldn't feel.

Cas never spoke, but he listened; whatever he thought, he kept to himself, but he listened and right before Jimmy finally ran out of words and into sleep, he only said quietly, "Thank you," pressing briefly closer in a rare display of vulnerability.

Jimmy just tightened his grip in answer; out of words, so he let the action speak for him.

He was smiling when he fell asleep this time, too.

 

 

 

There wasn't any premonition before it happened; the only omen he would note in retrospect was how quiet the world had gotten, but Jimmy chalked that up to the thunderstorm that was rolling in at the time. Nothing for them to worry about; rain couldn't touch them. They had finally found a road the night before, which was little more than a glorified pair of muddy ruts through the neverending swamps, and they had finally crossed from Mississippi into Louisiana, which probably would have happened sooner had Jimmy learned how to walk on water. It was business as usual.

Out over the still water of the swamp, ghost lights danced together. Above and around them an elemental would dart by occasionally; green or blue or yellow or any of a number of other colors, some that didn't even have names. Jimmy couldn't feel the weight of the humidity, but he could still feel the anticipation of the thunder breaking; could see it in the distant flash of lightning on the horizon.

He never saw it coming.

The first warning was like a buzz in the air, electric, washing over him like an almost tangible wave; it was the sensation of the hair standing on the back of his neck, of something crackling.

The second warning was that he had managed to walk ahead of Cas and hadn't even felt the angel stop, until he looked back and found Cas staring off into space, eyes wide, frozen.

Jimmy was just about to walk back, when he saw that the ghost lights had stopped.

The elementals had stopped.

_Everything had stopped._

He opened his mouth--

\--and then the sky broke open.

Jimmy was clutching his head before he even had time to think to do it, feeling pain for the first time since he had been disembodied; he gasped for air he didn't need, and it crashed over him like ocean waves, plaintive and shocked and desperate and frightened and broken, a wordless wail and then it resolved into one name

rolling and rolling and rolling across countless voices--

_**\--Gabriel, Gabriel--** _

\--and he realized it was the Host, tolling like great bells the syllables of Gabriel's name across time and space and dimension and he knew, oh, God, he knew right then--

_**Ga-** _

\--and Castiel was on his knees, burning as bright as what little grace he had left allowed, head thrown back and eyes closed tight, wings spread wide in pain,--

_**-bri-**_

\--crying out in his own voice a sound so beautiful and terrible--

_**-el.** _

\--that it could only be _mourning_.

It felt like the universe bleeding; like the stars were falling, like tides coming in made of flame; it was wailing and crying and singing at the same time, and Jimmy wasn’t even aware of his own voice joining in that sound, thin and human but a pitch perfect third below Cas’s, desperate just to voice the pain he could feel in his head and chest at the sound of every angel, every angel, crying and crying and crying.

The terrible, beautiful keening of every angel raising every voice in their grief.

The terrible, beautiful crying of one broken family, marking a loss it couldn’t bear.

Everything stopped. For the death of the archangel Gabriel, everything stopped.

Jimmy didn't know how long it went on. How long they cried. It could have been a minute. It could have been an eternity. He didn't know how long it went on. He knew that when it was over, the silence was deafening, almost as loud as the cries of the Host had been.

He knew that when it was over, the world shifted again; slow, at first, tentatively moving like it didn't really know that it even could. That he was gasping for air he didn’t need, past pain, and the sound felt impossibly loud.

That the rain started; poured through them like they weren't even there, thunder rolling overhead.

That his angel was sitting in the middle of a set of muddy ruts and puddles, wings laying on the ground like dead things, staring stricken into nothing; hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. A broken, winged thing.

That something fundamental had shifted permanently; that the universe would never again be the same place it was before.

He didn't have a body right now.

That didn't stop him from crying helplessly anyway.


	23. XXIII.

**XXIII.**

**2012**

The knowledge that he was going to lose this crept in like slow death, but it wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

Jimmy wished that it was the first time he'd felt that, but it wasn't; he wished he'd never felt it, of course, but life didn't work like that and neither did afterlife. Any which way, it was a familiar feeling; a certainty that no matter how victorious the battle, he was still going to lose. They were still going to lose. That even if he didn't end up captured, even if he managed to get back to Cas, even if he managed to save his angel's life one more time, there would be no erasing the scars carved deep on his soul right now, and there would be no great reward that could make Samandiriel's sacrifice worth the loss. That even if he succeeded in everything he'd set out to do, the Host would still be broken, and Cas would still be broken, and Samandiriel would still be killed or captured, and finally, that Jimmy would have to keep enduring that regardless of the outcome.

The last time he'd had that feeling, it was after picking Cas up off of the road in that bayou near three years before. And it wasn't a bad feeling, per se, back then -- more a settling, more an understanding that there would be no final glory at the end of this war. No true triumph. That they were going to bleed and probably die fighting the good fight, and that there wouldn't be some grand and wonderful reward for their effort, aside the knowledge that they did die fighting. At least then, he had the vague notion that Heaven was something they could maybe look forward to.

Now he knew better; he knew that there was nothing to look forward to, he knew that there was no reward.

It was a human thing, the self-deception that there could be some happy ending despite all evidence. It, too, was a human thing, the space on the other side of that self-deception where you realize there isn't going to be a happy ending, but you keep fighting anyway, despite all odds.

For one moment, one aching and amazing moment, he felt like he could reach across the borders of realms and feel Cas next to him. _We've been here before, you and I,_ he would say, if he could. _We know this place. Our clearing._

And, _I love you. I’ll see you soon._

 

 

 

None of their plans had worked. Not in time to save them, or not at all. Caius was shattered when Jimmy met him, and he only became moreso losing Samandiriel; what few self-defense mechanisms that the not-man-not-angel had left were poor at best, leaving him almost painfully subdued, and Jimmy felt for him. But what he lacked in coping skills, he made up for in raw, bleeding courage.

"You wanted the Garden," Caius said, sparks lit in his otherwise dull, shell-shocked eyes. "So, let's go. Take our blade and find God's favorite toadie and have a word. And maybe if he's amenable, he can tell us what happened to Samandiriel."

"And if Samandiriel's alive, we go get him," Jimmy said, calm and steady. Because… enough. He might lose, but he had to draw the line of how much somewhere.

A grin cut across Caius's face, ragged but real. "I think I'm starting to become _your_ secret admirer, Novak."

"Tease," Jimmy just answered, before manifesting a piece of chalk to draw on the wall of the building they were standing next to in someone's dream of New York City and offering it over. "Draw me everything you know about the Garden, about the defenses around it, about the numbers of angels guarding it. Everything."

Caius quirked eyebrows at him, a pale imitation of his usual fluid expressions, and got to work. Lines, and loops; he wrote in Enochian the words that had no possible translation, and in English the rest. It was all intel gathered recently, and since he'd gone on the run with Samandiriel, or it was ancient knowledge from before Gabriel fled Heaven, but it was better than Jimmy had.

"God's throne room. That's how every angel sees it; it's a garden, all right, but whatever of the Host isn't on assignment circles above it around the throne singing. A lot fewer angels now, but there will still be -- always be -- more angels than we can begin to deal with there, in tiers. Depending on what faction they belong to, it could be really good for us or really bad for us; since Castiel's war ended, it's been more covert ops up there than anything like outright warfare, but if we could turn factions on each other? They'd be too busy killing each other to pay us much mind," Caius said, gaze intent and steady on his work.

The idea of starting up bloodshed in Heaven again made Jimmy feel abjectly miserable. No matter how mad he was, no matter how bitter, no matter how much he wanted Naomi dead right now, some part of him couldn't forget that she had once been just like Cas, just like Samandiriel, just a joyful innocent voice in the choir.

It made him sick, inside, to realize she had been made what she was, too. And just like Cas, likely had no say in it.

"I wish there was a better distraction," he confessed, even though he knew it made him sound weak.

Caius flicked a hard look at him. "That's one of the _best_ ones." Then he looked back at his diagram, cursing under his breath about not being able to draw in all of the dimensions he needed to, before continuing, "I don't know if that'll work, though. She didn't get the power she has by brute force, she got it by being clever and cagey. Those poor, mentally mangled mooks working for her? She didn't get them all by fighting."

"No, she got them by offering safety and peace."

Caius's mouth twitched, bitter. "Pretty much. They weren't ready for the message Castiel had for them; he wasn't ready to teach it, either, if you ask me. Then taking out Raphael? Taking out all of the seraphim and then disappearing? They're clinging to whatever they can that looks like it knows what the hell it's doing. Free will's a great message, but if no one teaches you how to use it..." He shrugged, even though they both knew the nonchalance was bull. "And that's not something you do in a day or a week, it'd take years, and you sure as hell don't do it on a battlefield."

"I know." And Jimmy did. He'd gone over the psychology behind the Host so many times in his own mind that absolutely nothing Caius was telling him was new. Though, it was kind of nice that Caius was finally sharing. And even more just how insightful he was. Jimmy probably shouldn't have been too surprised; Gabriel was kind of immature, but he was by no means stupid, and Caius wasn't either. "The question is, how can we use any of this to our advantage?"

"That is the sixty-four gajillion dollar question, now, ain't it?" Caius said, drawing the path of the Axis Mundi carefully. "We can get in through one of the back doors, but it won't do us any good if we're captured the second we do."

"And Joshua won't shield us?"

"No. I wouldn’t count on it." Caius stopped, and looked at his drawing for a long moment. "Gabriel and I, we pretty much were experts at concealment. If I had his power backing my ass up, I could hide us even up here indefinitely, but I don't."

"Yeah, but you have some of it," Jimmy said, feeling a little dawning of fierce hope light in his chest. “Enough to fly a little. Enough to handle the outer belts.”

Caius worked his jaw, bottom one forward slightly, eyes narrowed on his sketch of the garden.

"I woulda hidden that kid," he finally said, at length. "He was too strong, too bright to conceal, though. But you and me, I might be able to give us... I dunno. Minutes. Maybe ten. Maybe less, maybe more," he bobbed his head left, then right, ticking it over. "Big problem is, though, it'll wear me right out, and you can't exactly get us through the outer belt yourself with the kind of close pursuit we're gonna get."

"I might be able to convince Joshua to help us, though," Jimmy said, leaning his hand on the wall and eying the Garden.

"I doubt it. He's never exactly been proactive." Caius was apparently holding a grudge, there. He leaned his shoulder on the wall on the other side of the drawing, crossing his arms. "I went to him when Gabriel told me no, and he didn't do jack squat then. I mean, if you had his kind of pull -- and he has it -- would you let things get like this?"

"No." That was a foregone conclusion; if Jimmy had any real power over Heaven, the first thing he would probably do would be gather every dead head shrink in the place together and have them introduce a massive family therapy plan to the Host. And he didn't fail to think about how ironic it was that he, of all people, who had dodged and ducked and weaved around the psychiatrist that Ames made him see, would advocate for that. But he was sure it was better than what was going on now. "But I've made some pretty hard sells in my life," he said, thoughtfully. "I mean, I've got you wanting to kiss me."

He managed to startle Caius into a laugh; short, and overlaying layers upon layers of shards, but genuine for all the longer it lasted.

"If I've got ten minutes, maybe I can convince Joshua to use some of his influence to at least get us off the hot plate for awhile," Jimmy concluded, offering a sideways smile back to Caius's brief laugh. "And if we fail, then at least we tried."

 

 

 

They didn't bother with planning this time. Not really. Once they had their intel down, once they had a rough sketch of what they had to do, that was about all they needed.

Jimmy had a banishing sigil painted on his own chest in his own essence, glowing quietly blue-white under his dress shirt. And since he wasn't tangled around his angel, and didn't have a body to lose, he figured this time it might even work. Neither he nor Caius thought that it would banish every angel circling God's throne, but as a last ditch escape method, it might just buy them precious seconds. Caius agreed to save just enough of his strength to throw them into the outer belt; Jimmy figured that he might be able to at least hang on and maybe get them somewhere once they were there.

And that was it. It was yet another dangerous, potentially suicidal mission, and Jimmy Novak was yet again unafraid. There was a peace to be found in accepting that you were going to take a beating and that there was nothing you could do to avoid the beating, so you could at least take it with dignity.

"Ready?" Caius asked, fingers laced with Jimmy's, the faintest smirk painted across his lips.

"Yep," was all Jimmy answered.

They came into the Garden like wraiths; Caius shimmering with his archangel's echoed grace, and Jimmy shoving down the urge to spend a few hours curled around his nonexistent stomach after sliding through one of the very few cracks here, oozing back to their familiar forms with a gut-churning lurch.

"Don't let me go," Caius said, voice already strained. Jimmy felt that in his heart, both for his own memory and for Caius, and just squeezed his hand back, the gesture both a promise and a reassurance.

And then he looked _up_.

"Oh," Jimmy breathed, and for once wished he had tears for a _good_ reason.

On their tier, it was a garden. Green and pure and full of life. But above...

All Jimmy had to do was open his mind, to see and hear the choir above. Because circling pure light was more light; shifts of blue and gold and white and flashes of rainbow and colors he never had names for and impressions of wings, and the glorious voices of thousands of angels, circling and singing, circling and singing _holy, holy, holy_ , in staggered perfection, and for a moment he was so stunned by the beauty that it took Caius tugging his hand to move him again, and even then he couldn't tear his eyes away from the sight of them.

His heart felt too full, and it felt too damaged to hold what was filling it; exquisite pain, and joy, and grief, and a million things he could never, ever name, looking at the remnants of the Host's choir.

It was Gabriel's voice that interrupted him; a hint of the power, a hint of the archangel's history, when Caius said, "Shoulda seen it before, kid."

"Yeah," Jimmy answered, cracked.

He understood, in that moment, why Samandiriel said he would return them all to the choir, forgetting all of the pain and the grief and that there was ever such a thing as fear and anger and silence. The perfection of it, the divine perfection of it. The _peace_. All at once, he understood why Samandiriel would have wanted that.

And all at the same time, he understood why Castiel stood upon the edge of it, on the edge of perfection and peace, and then turned away from it. Into the mud and the chaos and the abyss and the world where the question _”Why?”_ ruled all; into his own death, into his life after, into the painful and brutal and sometimes joyful fight for freedom. Into confusion and growth and change and love and fear.

Jimmy wondered, right then, how anyone could ever doubt what kind of courage that took. Including himself.

"Sometimes, some things must die, so that other things can grow strong enough to live."

Jimmy only managed to drag his attention away from the choir when Caius answered, small and hurt and vicious, "Oh, fuck you."

Joshua stood in front of them with his gardening gloves on one layer; his gloriously bright, angelic form on another. His voice was heavy, layered in ways even more nuanced than Cas's, and Jimmy shivered at the sound, something between pleasure and pain, as Joshua said gently, "The same lesson applies now, as it did then. Hello, Caius. Hello, Jimmy."

"I'd buy it, if Dad didn't interfere when he felt like it," Caius bit back, trembling a little; the gold and white of Gabriel's grace was wrapped around himself and Jimmy, and Jimmy didn't want to think about what it was costing Caius to wield it in such a way as to hide them in glamor from all of the angels circling above.

"Such is God's prerogative," Joshua said, face creased in compassion. "You boys are in danger; why would you risk coming here?"

"Samandiriel," Jimmy answered, rubbing his thumb against Caius's in silent support, "and Castiel."

"Samandiriel lives," Joshua said, and Jimmy didn't know whether to find that horrifying or not. "As you already know, Castiel is in Purgatory."

"Where is Samandiriel?" Caius stepped forward, tugging Jimmy along with, wings flaring behind their backs in open threat. "Where did they take him?"

"I don't know." Joshua just peered back at the not-man-not-angel, forehead still creased. "Intelligence has its own section of Heaven it works from. I have nothing to do with that. Even if I knew where Michael had set that up, I wouldn't be able to tell you how to get in."

"You can always ask God," Caius snapped. "You know, instead of pretend to be a buddha. Who do you think you're--"

"Can you help us?" Jimmy asked, cutting Caius off with a tug on the hand, all too aware of time ticking down on them. "Can you ask Him?"

"No." Joshua shook his head. "Jimmy. Caius. If you two knew how many times I've had both man and angel plead with me to ask for intervention, you would realize how little it actually happens. I know," he continued, forestalling both of them opening their mouths, "that it seems He's being unnecessarily cruel, but you must remember that what you choose to do with what you've been given is the very definition of free will. And so is living with the consequences."

Jimmy stared, incredulously, and then straightened his back. "No. You know, _no_. Why does He get a pass on the consequences of His actions, then? He hurt them!" He shot a hand up, pointing up to the choir, feeling the burn of rage in his chest. "He hurt them, and then He left them; that's not growth, that's really awful parenting! That's cowardice! And now, He gets to hide behind some free will bullshit? Free will is taking responsibility for your actions!"

"As you did?" Joshua asked, implacable. Gentle, but frank.

Amelia. Claire. No one needed to point that out to Jimmy. But he'd been grappling with that far too long not to have an answer. "Yes. Like I did. Because I get to live with it and struggle with it and regret it," he snapped back.

Joshua tipped his head down to peer at Jimmy, and only asked, "What makes you think He doesn't have to live with this and struggle with this? That He doesn’t have to regret this?"

Jimmy opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He never really stopped to think that God would. Regret it. Struggle with it. It was really only Caius's wing brushing his back, trembling as it kept falling lower and lower, that dragged him out of the giant gopher hole of questioning that Joshua just provoked in his mind. "He can still do something to help. I have to accept that I can't ever go back to my family, that I left them and going back now would just hurt them, but He doesn't," Jimmy said, trembling himself, though for different reasons. "He can still help here!"

Joshua pressed his lips together briefly, stepping over and reaching out to steady Caius, who managed to find the strength to jerk away from the offer with a silent snarl. But he addressed Jimmy. "I have a question for you: If you had known then, what Castiel would go on to do, would you have spared his life?"

Jimmy frowned, managing to switch hands with Caius to get an arm around him and hold him up. The strain pouring off of the not-man-not-angel was unnerving, but Jimmy still had to ask, "What do you mean? What does that have to do with any of this?"

"God resurrected him for His own purposes, but first He gave you the choice: Take Castiel's life, or spare it. And He would have abided by that choice. If you had known then, what would happen later, the destruction he would cause, would you have spared it?" Joshua asked.

Jimmy didn't even need to think about it. "Yes. Always yes. Forever yes," he answered, without hesitation, and how screwed up was it that Cas had been bound helpless by his own Father and handed to Jimmy like a lamb for the slaughter? "And you know, I think I know where you're going with this, so let me go on to say that I would have never had to spare it if his Father had taken responsibility for all of His broken children, the children that He broke, enough to re-earn their trust and teach them how to handle the damage He caused. Not erase it, not run away from it, but take responsibility for it."

"I spent almost three thousand years," Caius panted, raggedly, "with Gabriel. And he never got over it. 'Cause humans might call Him God. And maybe He has all these stupid plans that are oh-so-important. But to Gabriel, He was _Dad_ , and if you don't get how fucked it is that Dad pulled a hit and run, then screw you forever. Why the fuck do you think we spent so much of that time meting out retribution on arrogant scum? 'Cause we couldn't mete it out on the most arrogant scum in the universe!"

Joshua didn't bother to point out the blasphemy, and Jimmy didn't bother to stop Caius. Joshua just sighed, a tired sigh, "I wish that you would understand. You would hurt less, if you could just open your minds--"

"No." Jimmy hitched Caius up, shaking his head. "I know this: The angel God resurrected and then abandoned? I saved and will never regret saving. And it didn't take omnipotence, it didn't take power, it didn't take plans or whatever else. It just took someone believing in him long enough to forgive him his mistakes, and loving him enough not to give up on him when he made them. And that's it. If a fricken salesman from Illinois can do that," he asked, "what excuse does _God_ have?"

"Jimmy," Joshua said, as Caius finally lost the grip on their shield, "did it ever occur to you that perhaps all God wishes for is the same?"

The instant attention of the choir above, initially confused, would have jolted Jimmy harder if not for the fact that the question already had. "It will when he owns up to it and _tries_ ," was all Jimmy answered, clinging to Caius and tearing the buttons open on his shirt in preparation to flee.

He never got the chance to act, though, and neither did Caius. Joshua raised his hand as if to stop them--

Everything went white, beyond white, beyond any human description of white.

When Jimmy managed to open his eyes again, when he managed to get in touch with himself enough to register the world again, he was laying in a tangle of limbs, some feathered and some not, and Caius was sobbing half-conscious, the kind of sound that could only be tearing out of some deep place where all of your greatest heartbreaks and joys are stored.

Jimmy looked out over the vast, flat desert; the mountains wavering in the distance, the reality all around them, feeling like something inside of him was unbound and allowed free, and then he dropped his head to Caius's chest and didn't know whether to laugh or to sob himself, so maybe he did both. He didn't know.

They were on Earth.


	24. XXIV.

**XXIV.**

**2010**

Gabriel was dead.

Angels were unwieldy.

Cas didn't actually weigh much without Jimmy's body to provide mass. Next to nothing. All metaphysical manifestation aside, he was a creature of light and grace and consciousness, and just that bit of soul. Jimmy thought maybe, in his dazed philosophical thoughts, that it was that piece of soul which gave Cas anything like weight at all. Humans weren't meant to fly; when they overcame gravity, it was only ever through ingenuity and will, not because they were supposed to become flying things.

He wondered if Cas ever had to fight the weight of that piece of Jimmy. If some part of the angel would forever now be seeking the center of the Earth, forever tied to the ground, even if he could soar again. They had both expected that piece of Jimmy's soul to burn out once it had become a part of Cas. And it didn't. It remained there, a different cooler blue and a different white, threading through the richer gold and blue. It waxed and waned, but it endured; a permanent mark.

Some small part of Jimmy regretted it, regretted marking Cas like that. A much larger part didn't.

Even almost weightless, though, angels were unwieldy. Jimmy's angel particularly so, what with the overcoat and the wings both.

He had tried everything. He had pushed and prodded and coaxed and talked. He had sang. He had stared hard into the mirrors of his own eyes, looking for anything there; any spark, any recognition, any sign that Cas was still there aside the fact that he was metaphysically still present. He had _begged_ , and still there was no sign of life. Cas had gotten into the habit of breathing surprisingly easy and did it automatically, and he wasn't even doing that now. Didn't flinch when Jimmy touched his face, didn't blink.

Jimmy had no idea how long he sat there, feeling utterly and completely and desperately helpless.

Jimmy had no idea how he managed to find the determination to not be completely and desperately helpless.

It was sometime after the sun was already up that he finally stopped staring dazedly at Cas, who was little more than candlelight in his truest form (Jimmy finally sucked it up and looked), and turned his eyes to the threads of blue and white still leading towards his body. They couldn't be that far from New Orleans now. Maybe if they could get into the same headspace, he could figure out what to _do_ ; maybe if Cas was trapped in Jimmy's skin, he couldn't just go away.

So, he stood. Looked at the great wings laying like dead things on the ground. Tried folding them, but without Cas holding them up, they just flopped lifelessly back down. First things first. The coat and tie. At least he was able to influence that; they were only a representation, not imbued with any special power, and once he pulled those off and then the copy of his suit jacket, letting them vanish, it was easier to drag Cas up and hold him up by the back of the belt. And since he was virtually weightless, it was a lot easier to fold those wings to something approaching their normal state of rest. Finally, still feeling in that place beyond punch drunk, he managed to hoist the unresponsive angel up into his arms, wings and all.

In just his shirtsleeves and faintly glowing more blue-white than anything else, Cas looked more like Jimmy than Jimmy did.

Jimmy himself started walking.

He didn't really see the road. It was just... something. The world was just something. He didn't really see it, and couldn't really feel it; the only thing he really felt aware of was the phantom weight in his arms and the rustle of feathers whenever he'd shift his grip.

He wondered what had changed. Or, he wanted to wonder. It wasn't like he didn't know. Gabriel was dead. But there was more. So much more. He just needed to put the pieces together. There were so many of them, like a broken window, a thousand pieces of it. He had to put it together, but his mind was sluggish and dull.

He'd finally closed Cas's eyes, because he couldn't take looking at the blankness of them anymore, like he was carrying a corpse. The bonelessness, though, didn't help.

"Ah, man," the voice said, and Jimmy looked up to see their occasional visiting reaper standing in front of them on the muddy road. He actually sounded sort of sad and sympathetic. He stepped closer, wincing a little. "I was kind of rooting for you two. Much as I could, you know?"

Jimmy took a step back, clutching Cas closer, and he was aware he probably looked a little feral, but he didn't care. "You're not getting him."

The reaper blinked, holding his hands up in surrender. "Whoa. Easy, Jim. I'm not here for your angel, I promise. I don't reap angels. I don't even know if angels _can_ be reaped."

"You're not here for me, right?" Jimmy asked, though he relaxed a little bit.

"Nah." The reaper stepped over again and hovered a hand over Cas's forehead, though he looked at Jimmy for permission. When he got a nod, he rested his hand there for a moment, eyes distant, then winced again.

"What?" Jimmy asked, when the reaper took his hand away.

"I think you're the only thing between him and the great big nothing," the reaper answered, looking between the two. "That little soul sharing thing you have going on there. Like an anchor. Dunno why he's out, though, unless Gabriel's death just overloaded him. I mean, weak, yeah, but he's not so weak he shouldn't be awake."

Jimmy swayed briefly, not because Cas was heavy, just because... because. Because his angel was laying catatonic or unconscious in his arms, and because a reaper had just told him that Jimmy was probably the only thing between Cas and _death_ and then Jimmy just lowered them both to the ground, shifting Cas in closer to his chest, head against shoulder. "Where do they go when they die?" he asked, even though he didn't know if he wanted the answer.

The reaper sat down too, crosslegged, just as unaffected by the mud. "No one knows. Angels weren't created to die. They didn't start dying until about six thousand years ago, and no one knows what happens when they do… at least, no one I talk to. They burn. They might just burn out. I've never heard of one dying like this, though. Slowly."

"We break all the rules," Jimmy said, with a brittle chuckle. His bottom lip kept trying to get away from him, so he pressed his nose into Cas's hair, holding his head steady with the other hand.

The reaper shook his head, with a rueful grin. "Boy, you're not kidding. I mean, from what I know about angels and vessels, they're soldiers and you're tools, and they do all the acting and moving, and you just sleep right on through, and if you live you get the rest of your life kind of gravy and if you die, you always get Heaven. But you two, you're-- friends. Or something else."

"We _are_ ," was really the only answer Jimmy had for it. "We just are. I don't know what you call it. Friends, you know. You go to church with them, or host cookouts, but they can't feel your thoughts, or sing to you in your head, or literally live in your skin with you. I mean, you can talk to them and be open with them, but not like this." Jimmy huffed out a breath, half a sad laugh, feeling kind of unbalanced. "I've been more intimate with this angel than I have with my _wife_. He knows stuff I'd never tell her, never had even thought to tell her. I know stuff about him that he'd never tell anyone, not even his _Father_. I don't know what you'd call it."

"Love." It seemed an easy answer for the reaper. "Sure, it breaks all the rules, but love."

"Foregone conclusion, I guess." Jimmy wasn't afraid of the word. He wasn't sure how to define it, but whatever form it took, song or shared thoughts or shared motion or the willingness to fight or the courage to keep getting back up, there wasn't really any other word, but love. "I wish he'd wake up. I know I'm supposed to be scared, like frantic scared, but right now I just feel hollow, like an ache. Like someone cut something out of me."

The reaper twitched a sad little smile. "Hey, if anyone can call him back out, I'd put my money on you."

"I've tried. For hours and hours." Jimmy was starting to wonder if he was talking in his sleep; everything was getting thicker and slower, and he had about as good a mouth filter on right now as Cas usually did. Which was to say, none at all. "Everything I could think of short of hurting him, and I'm not doing that. I just keep not letting go, but I don't know what else to do."

"Just that," the reaper shrugged, reaching out to pat on Jimmy's knee. It sent a serious cold chill up Jimmy's spine, but he didn't flinch. "Don't give up. Have faith. Keep walking, get back to your body. You'll need him to get back in it, anyway."

"Yeah." Jimmy sighed, tiredly. He knew he didn't have much time. But he needed to lay down. So, after a moment, he looked around and managed to find a piece of non-swamp off the side of the muddy road. Base of a low, rooted tree. "You know my name? Did Cas give it to you?"

"No." The reaper stood, and gave him a hand under the elbow getting up. He smiled kind of a sheepish little smile. "I, uh. You're not on my list. But someday you will be."

Jimmy startled at that, a cold jolt of fear waking him, again clutching Cas in close. "You're _my_ reaper?"

"Not yet." The reaper shook his head, hands up again. "Not yet. But my name's Jasper, if you were wondering. And when it's time, I guess maybe it'd be not so bad to be taken by a friendly face you kind of know?"

It was a long moment, where they regarded each other. And then Jimmy felt something almost like peace slide in, replacing the fear; Jasper wasn't exactly a friend, but he was kind of a friend, too. And Jimmy could see how he'd prefer that. "Not yet."

"Not yet." Jasper looked between them again, and then back more solidly at Jimmy. "I'll come back and check on you two, okay? Good luck."

"Thanks," Jimmy answered, at length, settling down in the spot he chose, under the shade of leaves. He wrapped himself back around Cas as tight as he could, like he could physically keep the angel here with him, could hold on long enough to overcome whatever trauma had Cas checked out of reality. When he looked back up, Jasper was gone.

Jimmy fell asleep halfway through singing The Sound of Silence.

 

 

 

Cas came back to the world just like he'd checked out of it; light and sound and pain.

Jimmy came back to the world in a flail of elbows and knees and wings, every instinct instantly on alert to _fight_ , because even with it missing three quarters of its multilayered and multidimensional glory, he knew that voice and he knew that scream, and he gathered himself to take out a nonexistent attacker before remembering that whatever Cas was reacting to, it was somewhere in that forgotten past that scared the Hell out of both of them, and that Jimmy was getting the heck beaten out of him, even though he didn’t feel any pain from it, and he managed to get a grip on a shoulder and a wing, and by the time the screaming stopped he was half-pinning Cas and Cas had his shirt collar in a death grip, and Jimmy was staring into the wide, traumatized mirror of his own eyes, which stared through him with such frank and unbanked terror that he trembled on empathy alone.

Neither of them moved; they panted in unison, desperate drags of air they couldn't even breathe, didn't even need, and shook, and Jimmy finally managed to find his voice, if cracked, and sang Cas's name at him, soft and calm as he could.

Cas blinked once, twice. Finally focused on Jimmy, and Jimmy could see it all clicking back into place, each awful piece at a time. All the way back to the Beginning, snap snap snap, like pieces of a puzzle, swift and merciless, unrelenting. Every scar and every loss and every battle since then.

Everything recent, hitting and cutting, one right after another. Harrowing Hell. Anna. Uriel's betrayal. Heaven's torture. Amelia and Claire. Turning against the Host. Dying by Raphael's hand. Every brother and sister felled by his blade since.

Ellen. Jo.

God, turning away.

Dean, banishing them.

"Cas, I'm so sorry," Jimmy said, softly, because as awful as it had been feeling that devastation hit, one piece at a time until they were ready to march into a suicidally reckless situation in Van Nuys, it had nothing on seeing it coming together before him.

"Gabriel," was all Cas said back, and it was shattered and disbelieving and innocent, what his voice from six thousand years ago must have been, from when he couldn't understand _why_ he suddenly felt fear and silence, _why_ he was left trembling in the wake of his Father's anger, and all of the things that anger had ended forever.

Jimmy didn't have anything -- anything in the universe, anything between them -- that he could ever say in response to that.

But he could hold Cas while Cas fell apart and cried, clutching Jimmy's shirt collar in one fist.

And so, he did.

 

 

 

Castiel only ever said one more thing about Gabriel's death; again tucked under Jimmy's chin, he watched the sun come up when the night finally ended, and he asked in heartsick bewilderment, "How does it keep _rising_?"

And it was the question of every brother who forever lost something they grew up knowing was permanent; the question of every conscious living thing that loved and lost and in that loss couldn't quite understand that the universe would keep going, when it felt like it should forever stop there.

Jimmy held on tighter, and he breathed, and he gave the honest answer because it was one he actually did have; because it was one he asked himself as soon as he realized that he was never going home again, and it was the only answer there was: "The same way we do. One day at a time."

And so, gathering themselves and their courage and their inevitability and their scars, that’s what they did.


	25. XXV.

**XXV.**

**2012**

Carrying Caius was even more unwieldy than carrying Castiel; even on Earth, Caius had his wings and they were massive. Jimmy wasn't even sure how he could touch Caius, let alone manage to get the entirely awkward not-man-not-angel into his arms, but he didn't grudge it. Caius had taken a hit to shield them in the Garden; the least Jimmy could do was take care of him until he could climb back to his feet again.

Caius, for his part, spent the first day's slow travel either unconscious or semi-conscious and crying. He didn't need to be awake to tell Jimmy why; Jimmy knew.

Caius had already been in Heaven when Gabriel died.

Being unable to break down in tears there meant that every single one now, every sob, every broken noise, was one that Caius couldn't give his archangel when it happened. Jimmy was given to being easily moved to tears; it had never really bothered him, nor had it ever made him feel weak or insecure. But he had a feeling Caius wasn't, just like Cas wasn't; when something hurt them badly enough to cry, then the worst kind of cruelty was denying them that last outlet.

The more Jimmy thought about it, the more he ended up folding the prickly, infuriating echo of an archangel into his heart, alongside Samandiriel, to go with all of those he loved. Someone needed to. If God wouldn't, then Jimmy absolutely _would_.

Caius spent most of that time incoherent; Jimmy spent most of it soothing and carrying. And when both were quiet, he took in the Earth around them, not even sure what continent they were on, and tried tiredly to consider their next strategy. Their options had broadened significantly when they landed here, and Jimmy didn't know if he should be thanking Joshua or whoever else, but he did know that every single step he took now rang and echoed with the inevitable.

Every step was towards an ending, drawing ever nearer.

The first day netted no ideas, aside to find civilization; Jimmy wished he had taken the time to learn how to manipulate matter last time he was sans body, because it could have come in handy by now. He knew possessing someone was a possibility, but it was one he was wholly loathe to consider. He knew he could contact someone, but he didn’t know who; he knew Sam was out there somewhere, but not where.

Caius came back to himself the second day; true to form, he covered his emotional meltdown and lingering exhaustion with snark, even as they set out.

"Well, Moses, where to now?" he asked, as they set off again in the direction of the mountains that never seemed to get closer. "Gonna go spend forty days camping?"

Jimmy snorted; heading for the mountains they were, but he'd long since given up on possibly hearing anything back from God. Or, at least, anything genuinely useful. "That would figure, wouldn't it? We get there and get the next commandments."

"Numero uno being, 'Ha ha, assholes, you're on your own.'" Caius smirked, though it seemed half-hearted at best. "Actually, that'd be the only one. On the back, it says, 'Gotcha.'"

"Or 'punked'."

"I can't believe you just said that." Caius shot him a sidelong look. Jimmy just shrugged back, trudging across the ground that didn't mark his footfalls. "That's what, like-- nineties? Or-- whoa!"

Caius managed to find it in himself to leap backwards, nearly tripping over the wings he could barely hold up, and Jimmy spun to see what had caught his attention so thoroughly.

His heart -- or at least the metaphysical representation of it -- jumped into his throat, hit his gut, then bounced around his ribcage. It wasn't fear, exactly; more surprise. He had been expecting Naomi, at the worst. But instead it turned out to be someone he honestly didn't think he'd ever see again.

"Jasper."

The reaper looked no different than the last time Jimmy could remember seeing him; still the same suit, on one layer. Still the yellow, almost pretty and also terrifying smoke form on another. And still skeletal, with a scythe. Jimmy didn't remember seeing Jasper when he'd died at Stull, but he knew the reaper must have been there; the last time Jimmy had visited with him that he could remember had been New Orleans.

He wondered if Jasper had known how close Jimmy was to running out of time then.

"Hey, Jim." Jasper's dark eyes took him in, then glanced at Caius, who was staring with one superior eyebrow raised. "You and things with wings, man." Then he looked back at Jimmy again. "And your rule breaking. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you're not supposed to be here."

"I know," Jimmy said, going for casual and keeping the caution he was feeling buried deep. "I kind of have some unfinished business."

"No, you really don't," Jasper answered, face serious. "You really, really don't. You're supposed to be off in the land of milk and honey."

"More like the land of boredom and deceit," Caius said, stepping up to stand next to Jimmy, feathers ruffling in a quiet little warning. Jasper stared at him for a long moment, and Caius took it as a chance to continue, "If the man says he has business, he has business. Besides, don't you vultures have some kind of rule about reaping the same soul twice? Huh?"

"Oh, for-- Gabriel's vessel? You're hanging out with Gabriel's vessel." Jasper pressed a palm to his forehead, then dropped his head, before looking back up at Jimmy again. He looked far more harried than he used to; that, Jimmy was willing to chalk up to having to see the same charge twice. "Jim, c'mon. Let me take you back. You really don't belong down here anymore, you don't even have an anchor."

Jimmy just answered, simply, "Cas is in trouble."

"Castiel is _always_ in trouble," Jasper said back, though there wasn't anything truly unkind about the statement. "Castiel _is_ trouble, he’s been nothing but trouble since you went to the great big pasture in the sky. Did you know he ran afoul of my boss? He got into a pissing contest with _Death_."

"Yeah, I kinda heard about that." Jimmy tried to ignore the way Caius was staring holes into the side of his head and sighed. "Look, I can't go back to Heaven. The angels are out for my soul, and they mean to use me as leverage to get to him. Okay? And I know this isn't your department, but Jasper, I'm in trouble and the only ally I have is Caius here right now. I get it if you can't help me, but please don't hinder me, either, okay?"

"Where would you go?" The reaper stared at him, and it kind of didn't actually surprise Jimmy at all, the concern on Jasper's face. In his own way, he had been an ally; rule-bound and conscientious, but never cruel, never even impatient. "How did you even get yourself into this? You should be living in eternal paradise right now."

"Paradise isn't really paradise, when you know as much as I do," Jimmy said, smiling ruefully and tapping the side of his head. "I was miserable. I managed to come up with some spellwork that let me dream walk Cas, and it all kind of snowballed from there. Here we are."

"Man, you two." Jasper buried his face in his hands for a long moment, groaning, then dragged them down and kept staring at Jimmy with forlorn disbelief over his own fingertips.

"I don't see what the problem is. You did your job, he busted out, you bug off and pretend you never saw us," Caius said, shrugging. "Unless, you know, you want to make yourself useful and transport us somewhere."

Jasper gave him a vaguely annoyed look. "It doesn't work that way. Not that I expect you to know that."

"Doesn't he have a reaper?" Jimmy asked, eyebrows up.

Jasper scoffed. "Hell no. His archangel was all over him from the moment of conception. He wasn't even a _zygote_ when Gabriel was hovering around waiting for his true vessel. He's the only human soul next to Jesus Christ who wasn't assigned a reaper."

Caius smirked and bobbed his head to the side in a quick little motion, smug. "Damn straight."

"You know an awful lot, these days," Jimmy said, tilting his head a little, taking in his old-- well, friend. He didn't like the suspicion that flared up, but he also couldn't exactly afford to be trusting, either -- if anyone could find a human soul on the lam easier than an angel, it'd be a reaper.

"I got promoted, when the apocalypse didn't go down. I mean, nothing huge, just moving up a few ranks, but it kinda helped that I had some actual face-time with an angel on my resume." Jasper sighed, shaking his head. "You know I can't make you go with me. I mean, promoted or not, that holds. But I've always been straight with you, and Jim, this is a Bad Idea, capital letters kinda bad, you running around down here trying to help Castiel again."

"Actually, I'm kind of hoping he'll stick me back in my body again," Jimmy said, offering a wry half-grin. "He can do that, you know. But for the moment, he's in Purgatory, I'm on the run from the Host, and I’m in the middle of... where are we, anyway?"

"The Mojave," Jasper supplied, looking at Jimmy a little mournfully.

“...the Mojave, trying to get somewhere so I can figure out if I can maybe summon a Greek goddess, who might have some idea how to get me to Purgatory given the whole pagan goddess thing--” Jimmy said, but then he paused and looked at his reaper anew.

Jasper apparently didn’t like that; he actually took a half-step back, face going intensely somber and serious. “No. It’s against the rules. Don’t even ask me for that, Jim.”

“So you can do it.” Jimmy frowned. “You can take souls into Purgatory.”

"Yeah. But no. I won't." Jasper palmed over his face again. "And I don't know anyone who would; if any reaper did, it sure as hell wouldn't be on the books, and I'd have their scythe if they're one of mine."

"I can't go back to Heaven. Neither of us can," Jimmy said; still, he wasn't willing to push too hard on the reaper, if only for fear of getting Jasper into trouble, especially after they lost-- "Wait. Okay. Is going to Heaven off-limits? I mean, not me, but you?"

Jasper's eyebrows drew together. "No, I do it all the time. Why?"

"Samandiriel," Caius spoke up, face instantly going from smug self-assurance to grim seriousness. "We had an angel helping us evade capture. Nicest angel you could ever meet. They captured him about a week and a half ago. Think you could take a look around, on the down-low, and see if you could find him?"

"On the very down-low," Jimmy added. "He needs rescued, and we need help. Win-win situation. Plus, it technically fulfills your duties, since angels can ferry souls to Heaven."

Jasper looked between them, clearly unhappy. But Jimmy could see him wavering just that little bit, too; that little bit of give that meant, in Jimmy's old life, he might be able to sell that fifteen second spot at ten-thirty at night. Jasper crossed his arms, looking off (probably to avoid the imploring look Jimmy was wearing) and debated on it before saying, "I do this for you, I go find this angel ally, you promise me you'll figure something out before you go nuts down here." He looked back at Jimmy, frowning. "Either back in your body, or back to Heaven."

"I'll promise to do my absolute best," Jimmy answered, honestly. It was the truth.

"I can't believe I'm doing this. Okay." Jasper raised his hands. "Hang tight. I'll see if I can't find him."

Jimmy nodded, taking a deep, unneeded breath. "Thank you. Keep yourself safe, too."

"Plan on it." Jasper took one more look at the two of them, and then he was gone.

"Want that kiss now?" Caius asked, eying Jimmy with his mouth curving into a slow, slightly lecherous smirk.

Jimmy wished that he could say a prayer for his reaper. And for Samandiriel. And for them. Instead, he just clutched onto hope tight and gave Caius a short, side-long grin back. "Rain check for when we finally have something go our way."

Caius looked up at the crystal clear sky, jokingly huffed out a sigh, and then plunked down to sit and wait. And after a few moments, Jimmy did the same.

 

 

 

It only took Jasper about five hours to bring back Samandiriel.

It only took Jimmy about five seconds to see the _damage_.

Samandiriel looked dazed; out here in the desert, he had no vessel, nor anyone to see his various forms who could be hurt by it. And Jimmy, long since capable of taking in the sight of an angel uncloaked, shifted his perception rapidly through layers of reality, taking note of each change, and each one making him feel sicker and sicker inside.

"Oh, kiddo," Caius said, beside him, small and stricken. "What have they done to you?"

Samandiriel blinked at him, while Jasper watched from off to the side. "I'm okay, Caius. I feel... very..." He seemed to search for the word, only to come up blank. "I'm okay."

It was so far from the truth. His wings were healed; scarred, but healed. But something about his grace, his very consciousness, was _off._ Not the same kind of off as Naomi's. Jimmy wasn't even sure how to quantify it, but it was like looking at something that had been cut apart and sewn back together, neatly and cleanly, but-- but with--

\--with--

"Jim?" Jasper asked, looking thoroughly spooked now, as he took Jimmy by the elbow, and Jimmy turned his head and found himself looking up at the reaper.

He wondered for a moment how exactly he had ended up on the ground.

Caius still looked like someone had hit him really hard in the head, and maybe the gut; Samandiriel, oh, Samandiriel, even after what they had done to him moved on instinct to pet the not-man-not-angel, though he did so more like a ghost walker. Gone was the bright, innocent serenity and wisdom that Jimmy had grown to admire; the muse who inspired and watched over the children had been cut apart and sewn back together with--

Jimmy could hear his own angel's voice in his head, melody and harmony and anxiety, clear if dazed: _I don't know where I go, when it happens, I don't know, except that when I come back I feel like I am missing parts and pieces, so don't let me go, please don't let me go._

He didn't know. He didn't know, how he managed to shove down the explosion it felt like he would become. He didn't know. How. How he managed to crawl to his feet, mouth hanging open, phantom tears running without check, staring in absolute horror as Caius folded Samandiriel in his wings and held on, so knocked over and soulsick that something in him wished he had a body simply so he could curl up around himself to die again. He didn't. He didn't know how. How he didn't scream.

"It'll be okay," Caius said, clutching the broken, cut angel against himself, rocking and rocking, sounding like he'd been the one so damaged. "It'll be okay."

"Jim," Jasper said again, pulling Jimmy up more firmly onto his feet and steadying him. "C'mon, man, talk to me."

Jimmy couldn't. Couldn't. He couldn't find words. Past the realization. Past the sight of Samandiriel. They should have killed him; they should have killed him, given him an ending befitting an Angel of the Lord. Not this. Not this, not this, not-- never this, and--

_Oh, Cas. Oh, God, **Cas**._

Samandiriel seemed baffled at first, being held by Caius, who stared off beyond the angel's shoulder and wing, past even reassurance, into some place where the full realization of what he was seeing was sinking into his soul, another mark carved too deep to ever make this worth it; that it could ever be worth it, any of it, that anything in all creation could be, for this to have happened.

"I'm okay," Samandiriel said, helpfully, but something in his voice cracked. "I can go sing again when I'm finished with my duties. I can-- I can-- Caius, I can--"

"Jesus," Jasper whispered; Jimmy only then became aware of the reaper still keeping a hand on him to keep him from reeling over.

"Caius. Caius." Samandiriel's voice cracked again; split, the pretty, clear layers fracturing. "Jimmy. Caius. I'm o-- I'm-- I can--"

Caius pulled back, just to stare at his face, letting go with one arm to reach up and thumb across an ethereal cheekbone, like he could rub away the damage.

"--run." Samandiriel's voice shattered, and then something briefly cleared in his eyes, something desperate and driven and _terrified_ and he said, "Run, you have-- you-- you-- _run, Caius_ \--"

\--but it was too late.

Jimmy heard them a split second before he saw them, and then just like that, they were surrounded.

"Samandiriel," Naomi's stern, clear voice rang out, an order. "Come here." And then, in a parody of praise, she added, "Thank you for helping us find the fugitives."


	26. XXVI.

**XXVI.**

**2010**

Whenever he cast his mind back to those final days of the Apocalypse, there were two things that he always returned to, either first or last. And they weren't the big things; they weren't the final battles, those huge moments, as important as those were. They weren't even some of the better, kinder moments here or there between. Jimmy wasn't sure what he would call them, even, except that they were everything.

The first happened when they stood next to the highway on the way into New Orleans, and the entire world moved around them; they, on the other side of the veil, barely noted it in the normal course and even less so, now. It had been three days since Gabriel's death, and slowly they had gathered themselves back together as they kept pushing on, tired and determined. It was during that time, that gathering of themselves, that Jimmy had asked Cas if he would go back and change it; go back to the choir, forget being a soldier. It was then, too, that Cas answered that he would not, but that he would have liked the choice to have been a soldier in the first place. That he would have chosen it for himself.

And that if he had the choice, he would have been able to keep singing.

"But music was his life," he had quoted, with a ghost of a smile, "it was not his livelihood."

It made Jimmy smile back, and he sang, "And it made him feel so happy, and it made him feel so good, and he sang from his heart, and he sang from his soul; he did not know how well he sang, it just made him whole."

"Yes."

It was then, that night, that Jimmy curled up with Cas and sang Shelter From the Storm for him; softer and slower than Dylan, but he felt it entirely apt.

“‘Cause in another lifetime, one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud, I come in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. ‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you shelter from the storm.’”

He didn't honestly know, as he sang it, which part either of them took within it. Which of them was the harried, exhausted narrator, or which of them was the ubiquitous she. He didn't think Cas did, either. Maybe it applied to them both.

But it was now that would become one of the two moments Jimmy thought of first and last, when it seemed all had been lost, even hope; it was now that would become something he wrapped around his heart as insulation and armor. Standing next to the highway on the way into New Orleans, necks tucked together like swans, Jimmy rubbed his thumbs under the sharp edges of Cas's shoulder blades, trying to get used to there being no feathers brushing his hands or arms, and Cas just relaxed there against him like it was the most natural place in the universe to be, comfortable and easy. A moment's rest they both needed.

"I'm fine," Cas said, mostly his version of Jimmy's voice, and only really a few layers of his own to harmonize above it. "They aren't gone. Merely... not here."

"I know," Jimmy answered, still soothing phantom aches with his thumbs. And he did; neither of them panicked when those wings flickered off of all of the planes that Jimmy could see, and into the last ones that neither of them could, ones rooted down to the core of what made an angel what it was.

Those that couldn't be seen, only known; into some place that existed on faith, if not in anything else, then in oneself.

"I might be able to use them once more briefly, if need be." Cas sounded drowsy, though not quite sleepy; he would never again ask what the point of this comforting was. It seemed, with Gabriel's death, with the loss of the voices of the Host, with the realization that they would still find some reserve of courage to get up and keep going, he finally understood.

Neither of them bothered to speculate on what that need would be. Neither of them knew, really, what was going to happen. How they would manage to end Lucifer, how they would manage to save the world. Only that they would try.

And, Jimmy knew, they wouldn't likely live past it.

"We're not walking away from this," he said, at length, rubbing his chin back and forth against the muscle between Cas's neck and shoulder once, before settling again.

"No," Cas agreed, without any disappointment or distress. Everything weary in him, everything that had seen too many wars, ready for some resolution to it all. "Likely not."

It was pointless to speculate on what would become of them if they did. Jimmy was sure, either way, they'd face up to it together. And at that thought, he grinned. It was useless to speculate, but even so, he found himself with a daydream about it. It wasn't going to happen; he knew it wasn't, but it was a nice dream and so he grabbed onto it.

"I would like," he said, "to go on a road trip with you, I think. Just hit the road, maybe go see the Rockies. No looking for God, no worrying about Dean and Sam. Maybe they can go, too. But no more fighting, just us and whatever it is we can end up seeing out there on the way."

Cas's answering grin was all in his voice, quiet and amused. "I've taken you to Everest, and yet you want to drive to the mountains?"

"Yeah." Jimmy chuckled; felt the sound vibrate through both of them. "You can pick where to go after that."

There was a long, thoughtful pause. Then Cas finally moved his head, resting it sideways on Jimmy's shoulder, peering off past the highway and all of the human bodies and human souls driving wherever their destination would be. "The house where you grew up. If it's still there. The one with the cold floorboards."

"We can do that," Jimmy said, at some length and a little cracked, and breathed.

Jimmy had only really ever felt love like this in moments; when it went from a constant warm, sincere thing that lived in the heart, and became your entire state of being, aching against the confines of your soul. Where it was indistinguishable from joy and pain both. Dozens of moments, but still only moments: His mother, after coming home from work weary and sore, watching him dance on little legs like a lunatic to the Beatles and then taking his hands and dancing with him. Ames, not on their wedding day, but on a quiet day weeks before; her arms full of clean, fresh-smelling laundry and him folding the previous load, and the warm light through the apartment they would be sharing after marriage. Her hair was a fiery halo in the sun, and she looked at him over the laundry basket, and she smiled. Claire, the first time she crawled on little toddler limbs into his lap while he was watching television, settling against him and patting a tiny hand against his side, hair damp from her bath, blue eyes looking up at him in perfect love and trust.

And now. For the angel who wanted to see the house where all of the music he'd learned from Jimmy was learned first.

Even though they never would. Especially because they never would.

"We can do that," Jimmy said again.

 

 

 

Looking down at himself was surreal; a bizarre mirror, body and man and angel, all three. Cas still in his shirtsleeves, and Jimmy who had finally left behind his own version of their coat and suit jacket and tie and donned the same, and their body in a hospital gown covered in tubes and monitors and wires. Battered and currently braindead, but intact.

"Are you able to put me back in?" Jimmy asked.

Cas looked quietly spooked; it couldn't have been the hospital that had him anxious, as a place, so Jimmy figured probably rightly that it was the idea of getting into an unconscious body and losing awareness himself. He was clearly exhausted, and the act of getting them both back in there would take whatever he had left in reserve. Even then, he nodded. "I think so. It won't be easy, but I think so. I need your permission to follow."

It kind of half-surprised Jimmy that Cas _would_ ; that after all of this, he would still need a yes. It was also a foregone conclusion Jimmy would give it. "You have it. Forever, you have it," Jimmy said, and he didn't know then that he'd basically willed his mortal form to Cas there, but even if he had, he would have said the same thing. "So, yes."

Cas managed a small smile; sincere, if shadowed. His hands twitched briefly at his sides, a rather human gesture, and Jimmy could see him gathering his nerve.

"You two," Jasper's voice said, startling them both. "You just don't quit."

Jimmy held his hand over his heart, but he still smiled at the reaper leaning against the wall with arms crossed. "No, we don't. Not here to stop us?"

Jasper shook his head. "Nope. Still not on my list, Jim." He turned his attention to Cas, peering at the angel. "I don't know how you're standing."

"Tiredly," Cas answered, laconic. "Any news?"

"Nope." Jasper pushed himself off of the wall, gesturing to Jimmy's body. "Need a hand?"

Jimmy felt his eyebrows go up, a little thrill of hope; he was worried about Cas burning himself out stuffing Jimmy back into his body, though they both knew it had to happen. This was a much better alternative. "You'd do that? Isn't it against the rules?"

Jasper grinned back. "No. It's an admittedly liberal interpretation of the rules, but no, it's not breaking 'em. I checked before I came, in fact. Some of us _like_ structure," he added. "Sure, no one currently present in this room but me, but..."

"It would be appreciated," Cas said, crossing his own arms; another little tic Jimmy had taught him that he'd made his own.

"So, let's get you resituated," Jasper answered, stepping over to bridge the gap between body and soul.

"One second." Jimmy held up his hand and took in the sight of his angel, quietly spooked and facing yet another period of nothingness. He knew, even though Cas had lost most of his voice, that he would probably end up waking to screaming anyway. There wasn't much he could do for it; whatever it was that had hurt Castiel had done it long before he came into Jimmy Novak's care. But he could still do this much.

He stepped over and he laced his fingers behind Cas's head, and he drew their foreheads together, a gesture that flowed like water long since. And he dropped his voice, into that intimate space where they existed in their own world, and said, "I won't let you go. I promise, I'll be there."

He felt, rather than saw, Cas unwind a little. Not entirely, but the trust in even that much was something Jimmy could never take for granted; it was earned, hard-won and fought for, and he thought he might be the only man who could ever get away with asking for it now. "I know," Cas answered, just as quietly, leaning a little into Jimmy for a moment before pulling back again.

"Good." Jimmy drew back, looking into the tired mirrors of his own eyes, and said unadorned, "I love you. I'll see you soon."

Something warm and achingly sweet flashed across Cas's eyes, even though his face remained still as ever, and then he nodded. "I'll see you soon."

"Ready?" Jimmy asked, turning back to find Jasper watching them with something he would maybe call fondness.

"Ready," Jasper answered, and held out his hand.

It was the last thing Jimmy remembered for awhile.

 

 

 

Jimmy woke first. Woke first several times, disoriented and weak and groggy and sore whenever the pain meds wore off. Woke up enough to have the breathing tube pulled, woke enough to stumble through the best bullshit explanations for his state that he could once he got his voice back -- another time being a salesman came in handy, coming up with excuses -- and woke up enough to eventually stay that way.

Cas slept on; Jimmy only knew he was there because he could feel that faint presence, if unconscious. No phantom wings at his back, no fire in his blood. But he still had a bit of an angelic perspective, even then; that, he thought, might be that cast off grace he'd picked up.

The sigil they'd carved into their chest itched as it healed, and it glowed a little, too, even though it no longer had power.

Jimmy was actually in okay shape, when Cas did come back around; sore, but coherent and clear-headed. It was a good thing, because even without a voice left to scream with, Cas panicked and Jimmy was on top of it, soothing and shushing and singing in their head until he could ease back into control of their shaking body.

He did most of the leading once things calmed back down, though they both did the moving. Jimmy kept having to take their hands back to keep Cas from scratching at everything that itched, and Cas kept having to take their feet back to keep Jimmy from bouncing one while fidgeting, but it was an affectionate squabble. Jimmy dealt with doctors and nurses, Cas dealt with Dean and then Bobby, and both of them managed to sneak out of the hospital, aching and concussed and sore, but still going on.

This was how Jimmy Novak entered the last week of his life: On a bus from the airport in Iowa City, aiming for Davenport, to try to fight a Horseman. He didn't know it at the time, of course. Didn't know that he’d just appeared on Jasper's list ( _indeterminate; soon_ was his designation), making his reaper have to sit down and stare at the parchment solemnly. Didn't know that it would be so soon, or so spectacularly bloody. Didn't know that it would be a frantic rush of motion and insecurity and driving courage and catastrophe right to that ending.

But even if he had, he probably would have spent the bus trip doing the same thing: Singing to the voiceless angel in the space between their ears, so that neither of them had to face it alone.


	27. XXVII.

**XXVII.**

**2012**

There were fourteen angels, excluding Naomi and Samandiriel. Most of them were damaged in similar ways, though to varying degrees.

Jimmy fell back, putting his back to Caius's. They stood no chance, not really, not against that number and not without so much as an escape option. Jimmy had no intentions of making it easy, though.

No chance, but he'd fight anyway.

And then Jasper manifested his scythe, squaring his shoulders and pointing the wicked, glowing blade at Naomi. "You have no business here, angel."

She raised an eloquent eyebrow back. "Nor do you, reaper. Step aside; I have no argument with you."

"My charge," Jasper said, and Jimmy could hear his voice gain layers as he drew on more power; the warm baritone became icy, and above it and below it, there were other, almost beautiful tones laid into it. A bone flute. The wind across the winter snow. The sound of beetles crawling.

Everything that signalled endings.

"Heaven is your domain; Earth is mine. You will not touch them." Jasper prowled to the side, inserting himself between Naomi and Jimmy.

"Caius is hardly your charge," she said, gesturing to the angels to close in, though all of them hesitated a little as the reaper became more and more threatening. "They have broken laws in Heaven. We could argue all century about whose business they are, but you’re outnumbered. Any misguided loyalty you might feel is admirable, but unnecessary."

"Naomi," Samandiriel tried, pleading, voice still fractured.

"Ion. Take Samandiriel back to Heaven." Naomi never even looked at the angel, even as she said it. "He's obviously distressed."

Before Jimmy could blink, Samandiriel and the other were gone. Which still didn't help their numbers enough. He drew himself up, standing behind his reaper's shoulder, and glared. He opened his mouth to say something, but Caius beat him to the punch, and the not-man-not-angel's voice was _chilling_ , in its faux-pleasantness.

"I'm going to have your head on a pike," Caius said, smiling a sharp little curve of a smile, eyes blazing gold. "I'm going to have it on a pike, and if I'm feeling generous, I'll hang it on the Gates. Do you understand me?"

"Please," Naomi said, a brief sneer breaking through her facade. "You're nothing more than an empty little echo. You have no right to those wings."

“Even the echo of my Gabriel,” Caius answered, smiling wider in vicious calm, “is better than anything you’ll ever have.”

" **Enough** ," Jasper said, and the sound his scythe made as he spun it elegantly once by its handle in his hands was like wind tickling across hollow, shattered bone. "You will retreat. Unless you want to challenge _my_ father, as I highly doubt yours will intervene for you."

Naomi's blade fell into her hand and she tilted her head with a grim little smile. "Didn't anyone tell you? My Father is dead."

Jasper didn't bother with any more posturing; he only said, as he turned and slashed out at an angel coming in on his left, a vesselless female, "In that case, you'll see him soon enough."

The melee took flight; Jimmy had no choice but to fall back, because Jasper needed room to move with a weapon of that range, and if there was anything that being in battle with Castiel had taught him, it was never to allow your enemy to get in too close if you could keep them back. An angel’s blade flew past his shoulder, and nearly hit Caius; Caius, undeterred, landed on another angel without a vessel and apparently, he still had enough presence to disorient if not hurt them. He slammed his palm to the angel's forehead, and the split-second flash of Gabriel's grace briefly stunned it, before he leaped off only to be tackled.

Jimmy saw nothing else, right then, because he was being tackled to the ground himself, and he grunted at the burn of foreign grace against him. The angel's stoic face peered at him for an instant, and then he reached--

\--Naomi _screamed-_ -

\--the angel looked up and over and Jimmy watched almost in slow motion as Jasper's scythe came around and slid through the angel's body, right over Jimmy's head, sending it off to the side to scream its death scream; the ash burned across Jimmy's chest and arms--

\--Naomi was bleeding gray-white grace, one of her stained wings sliced almost in half, hanging limp--

"Get up, we're getting--" Jasper started--

"JASPER!"

The angel blade stuck out of the front of the reaper's belly, and the vesseled angel behind him gave a vicious twist of the blade--

Naomi was still screaming on half the layers of her voice, but she still managed to order, "Kill it!"

"Not on my watch!" Caius yelled back, and the angel currently trying to gut Jasper from behind barely turned to find the archangel's echo barrelling right into him, knocking him off balance, and the blade was ripped out of Jasper--

Jasper collapsed half on Jimmy, gasping and flexing his hand on his scythe. "Gotta take--"

Jimmy managed to get out from under the wounded reaper, and he took up the scythe, both hands; it didn't glow for him, but it was still a formidable weapon, and just from his perspective, Naomi's group was down to half already--

"Caius, get him out of here!" Jimmy yelled, turning and jabbing the scythe at one angel who tried to flutter in behind him. "CAIUS!"

Caius beat his wings once, landing next to Jimmy and Jasper with a wince. "Fuck no, I'm not leaving you."

"Someone needs to escape to mount a rescue, dammit, so take Jasper and go!" Something fierce was singing in Jimmy's soul. "I'll hold them off!" Something fierce and gold, and despite himself, despite everything, he grinned a feral grin. "I'll hold them _all_ off."

"And I said fuck-- _oh fuck_."

Naomi's reinforcements had arrived.

"Caius," Jimmy said, staring at the face of everything going horribly wrong, at the now dozens of angels surrounding them, and not caring in the least. "Go."

"This is just--" Caius managed to turn Jasper over, who was semi-conscious and bleeding yellow smoke to curl up from his wounds, eyes rolled up. "Jimmy, you can't really--"

"Caius. _Go._ "

Caius stood and grabbed Jimmy's shirt with both hands, dragged him in, and the next thing Jimmy knew, he had Caius's mouth on his, intense and burning, and then Caius let him go and dropped back to kneel, gathering Jasper into his arms and saying, "Raincheck on the rest, Novak."

Normally Jimmy would have taken more time to process what it felt like, being kissed by an archangel's vessel, but for now all he did was grin wildly, and when he heard the great white and gold-gilt wings beat, throwing Caius out of the circle of angels, hopefully giving him time to leapfrog until rousing Jasper and teleporting, he just grinned even more wildly.

He spun the scythe like he'd watched Jasper do, and listened to it cut the air. And he was just that little bit gratified, when none of the angels wanted to rush him. When Naomi had to bark at them and order them to advance.

Of course, he never stood a chance.

_In the clearing stands a boxer..._

That didn't stop him fighting anyway.

 

 

 

Jimmy screamed when they burned the binding symbol onto his soul.

He wasn't sure if it was more for the pain, or for the fact that it was a blank-eyed, still bleeding Samandiriel who held him down for it.

 

 

 

Mostly, they left him alone. Locked in some blank, featureless room. He tried to paint magic onto the walls, but then he felt the symbol burn hot. He grit his teeth and kept trying, until he was dropped by pain to curl around his own forearm and pant through his teeth. He tried that, even so, about a half a dozen times before he had to give up.

He tried to peer through the layers and see the cracks, but the walls were opaque to him. He tried to sleep, but it was too bright, so he slept poorly.

In every dream, he could see Samandiriel; sometimes his bright angelic self, bleeding. Sometimes a little boy sitting next to his little girl, bleeding.

Jasper, with a bright silver blade stuck through him, but this time his attacker keeps cutting and gutting. 

Caius, with his beautiful wings torn from him, and Naomi trying to rip the rest of Gabriel's grace away.

Castiel.

Half of the time, it was Jimmy who woke up screaming. The other half, it was him waking up remembering his angel's screaming.

He wasn't sure which was worse.

 

 

 

There were two moments. Two, out of so many he treasured from the time between when he spared Cas to the time they were blown to pieces, that Jimmy wrapped around his heart as insulation and armor.

And he sat in that white empty room, and he had nightmares, and he waited. Sometimes he lost it and screamed, because he was again denied tears. Sometimes he curled around himself and tried to block out everything. Sometimes he tried to plan, but when it came down to it, he really only knew what he had known walking into it: That there would be no true triumph. That they were going to bleed and probably go down fighting the good fight, and that there wouldn't be some grand and wonderful reward for their effort, aside the knowledge that they did go down fighting.

There was nothing else for them to do, except to do as they have always done.

So, when they came for Jimmy, to take him away to Purgatory, to use him against his angel, he tipped his chin up and he wrapped his heart in every bit of the love they'd managed to fight for and earn and cling to and salvage, over and over; to their harmonies and their melodies and all of their songs; to every battle and every moment of heartache, and every single time they crawled back up out of the mud, battered and scarred and tired, to go back to the fight anyway.

And finally, he held onto two quiet daydreams on the side of a Louisiana highway, one shared dream in the backseat of the Impala, one garden, and one song, and went to face whatever ending this would be with a steady heart.


	28. XXVIII.

**XXVIII.**

**2010**

It was the last day of Jimmy Novak's life.

Dean had gotten Death's ring, the devil was in Detroit, they had enough demon blood in the trunk to saturate Sam's system so that he might stand a chance against Lucifer, and there was no way that whatever happened in the next twenty-four hours, it wouldn't be an ending. It couldn't not be. Everything had led them to this point, to this last-ditch and desperate plan; Sam Winchester would either save the world or he would not.

Any which way, it was going to be the end of the road. If they failed, the world would be devastated. If they succeeded, it wouldn't be.

There was no walking away from the beating that would come beforehand.

 _We should get some sleep,_ Jimmy said, giving Cas a mental nudge. The angel was half-hypnotized by the rumble of the Impala's engine, and despite it not being the first time that they'd had to give over to actual, proper sleep in the past week, this would likely be their last chance. As fraught as it usually was. But Jimmy could feel every sore muscle and every little ache, and probably most of all, he could feel the threading little tendrils that would become a serious tension headache if they weren't careful. _I don't know about you, but I don't want to face Lucifer with a pounding headache,_ he added, crossing their arms and settling them further down in the seat.

Up in the front, the Winchesters were quiet; the misery between them was almost tangible, and watching Sam keeping his nerve together and Dean just trying to keep anything together was hard enough. Jimmy wished there was something he could say to them. But when he tried to think of anything, he came up blank; what was there? _"I'm sorry, Sam. I wish you didn't have to get chained to a supernova so you could try to throw yourself into a burning pit of fire with it."_

There was no way that could go well.

It was miserable and wrenching, but this last-ditch plan was all they had. Condolences seemed like they'd be the last thing Sam would want to hear. And Dean. Jimmy didn't have much of anything he could say to Dean. Cas even seemed at a complete loss about it, and even though he very rarely tried, he always had something that he wanted to say to Dean.

 _Cas?_ Jimmy asked again. _We should at least take a nap._

He expected Cas to put up some form of resistance to passing out for a few hours; it had gotten easier, but not so easy that Jimmy expected an acquiescence.

And yet, Cas gave him one. A sleepy answer of, _All right,_ and an even more surprising tug on Jimmy back to their own headspace. Jimmy just barely had time to close their eyes before he left most of the outside world behind and found them face to face again for the first time since New Orleans.

He couldn't deny he kind of missed it.

"I wonder if we can dream together," he said, just as drowsy, flopping back and holding out an arm in offer.

"I don't know. If I had enough power. But then I wouldn't sleep," Cas answered, and he didn't even hesitate, putting himself up against Jimmy's side and resting his head on Jimmy's chest. "Perhaps."

It made Jimmy smile; the easiness of it, the trust in it, the affection around it. Every once in awhile, it came back to make him marvel, that the creature he was holding had seen the dawn of time, had seen humanity heave itself through the brutal process of evolution, had watched the rise and fall of empires. And that an ad salesman from Pontiac, Illinois could hold such an impossible, bright and broken thing.

"If anyone could," Jimmy said, with a half-shrug, so as not to dislodge Cas on his other shoulder. He let his free hand roam; petting, soothing, Cas’s head and neck and shoulder, which had become a habit when they were disembodied that he had no want to break. "We'll be there all too soon. Or all too late. I dunno."

"Just on time," Cas said, with an actual yawn they could both feel echoed in reality. "I'm not afraid. I keep wondering if I will be, but I'm not now. Just tired."

"I am, a little." Though Jimmy wasn't sure why. He wasn't actually afraid of probably dying. It wasn't like he didn't know there was an afterlife. He wasn't sure, then, why he was. It seemed pointless after all of this. "But yeah, mostly just tired. I think whatever happens, I'd like to have a nice long rest."

"In the mountains?"

"And then Chenoa, so you can see the house where I grew up."

Cas smiled, a peaceful little smile, eyes closed. "The one with the cold floorboards. Will you sing for me?"

"Yeah." Jimmy nodded, looking off into their no-space. Cas wouldn't even try singing with his human voice; once he lost the last layers of his own, he let Jimmy do all of the singing, though he still liked listening. If not for the fact that they were rapidly reaching the end of this road, Jimmy figured that it probably would have bothered Cas a lot more than it did; as it happened, they were just ready for all of this to be over. "Any requests?"

"The Boxer." Cas heaved out a sleep-heavy breath, soft and slow.

Jimmy had asked, at one point, what Cas liked so much about that one. It was one of Jimmy's favorites, too; musically speaking, any composition complex enough to require over a hundred hours of recording and multiple locations (including a cathedral) deserved some consideration. And the harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel were about perfect. But it seemed like an odd song for an Angel of the Lord to latch onto, too; a grim survivor's story, painfully frank in all of its protagonist's faults and missteps, and with no great triumph at the end.

 _It's very honest,_ was all Cas had answered.

And he was right. Jimmy got that, now.

"I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told; I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles such are promises. All lies and jests! Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest..."

Cas fell asleep without a fight before Jimmy had even hit the end, and after he finished the song and feeling just as safe, Jimmy followed.

 

 

 

It was the last day of Jimmy Novak's life, and they dreamed of a garden and sunlight; of some time when all of their wars were over, and where even still wearing all of their scars, they managed to find their way back to a world of joy and love and song.


	29. XXIX.

**XXIX.**

**2012**

Any piece of Purgatory looked like any other piece of Purgatory, to Jimmy's eyes; all desaturated and overcast and near colorless, all but for the angels surrounding him and the blue-white burn of his own tethered and chained soul. This clearing looked like any average forest clearing; a perimeter of trees and limited undergrowth and dead leaves.

That it actually was a clearing, though, thrilled Jimmy on some deeply rebellious level.

"Hey, Joltin' Joe," Jimmy called, before Naomi could muzzle him.

Castiel was in a condition a far cry from the last time Jimmy had seen him, what had to be a year or so ago now; the white hospital scrubs he had been wearing were gray and threadbare and filthy, and so was their coat. He wore most of a beard and he looked like the dirt and grunge of Purgatory had been ground right into his skin. He looked somehow older, too; gone was the scattered, shattered desperation in his eyes, and what was left was the same soldier Jimmy once knew, more tempered.

But despite the ragged physical layer, his ethereal self was glorious; bright and shining, even though he was wearing new scars. Not as strong, not nearly as strong, as he would have been had he not spent a year in this life-and-grace sponge of a realm, but still more powerful than any individual or even dozen individuals in the company of angels Naomi had brought to capture him. His great wings were half-spread defensively, and despite his obvious exhaustion, there was clarity and wariness in every single line of him.

Until he saw Jimmy. And at Jimmy's greeting, Cas’s eyes widened a fraction, visible even at seventy-five yards.

And Jimmy knew then that Cas knew. Knew that Jimmy had been real, back in that hospital, singing him out of the dark. Not just a wistful memory given form, not just a madness, but that Jimmy was there, because Cas still needed him.

That his sword and shield had found him, after all.

"What is the meaning of this?" Cas asked, drawing himself up, squaring his shoulders and looking around until his eyes landed on Naomi, who stepped forward to claim responsibility. Though he kept flickering glances back towards Jimmy, like he couldn't quite stop himself.

"We're here to take you home," she said, her tone almost gentle.

"Why do you have him?" It was a demand, and Cas leaned on his own voice, powerful and terrifying and beautiful, to make it. "Surely his soul isn't needed to mount a rescue into Purgatory."

"No," Naomi admitted. "I would say he's insurance. No harm will come to him, if you just come home with us."

_Don't you dare,_ Jimmy thought, as hard as he could, in his angel's direction. He didn't want to risk opening his mouth; that binding on his soul gave Naomi an incredible amount of control over him, and he knew that if she wanted to, she could torture him without even looking at him.

_Jimmy,_ Cas answered, awed, and Jimmy felt his heart soar at that sound in his skull again. Cas flicked one more look around at the amassed angels and--

 

 

\--they were face to face, somewhere in the headspace between the two of them, stretched across the clearing to meet in the middle together.

"Jimmy, what's going on?" Cas asked, grabbing first his shoulders, then his face, an echo of when Jimmy had done the same years ago. Every bit of the frantic worry that he'd never allow on his face out there radiated here, and he searched Jimmy's eyes, a mess of contradictory emotion. Worry, yes. But also joy for reuniting. Anger, for the soul-binding. Fear. Longing and love and pain.

"How much time?" Jimmy asked back, almost overlapping the question.

"I don't know; I'm holding us in this moment, but I won't be able to for long."

"She's taken control, mostly, of Heaven," Jimmy answered, wrapping his hands around Cas's forearms, not to move him, just to hold on. "Cas, she's what you can't remember; she's the thing that you can't remember, she's what made you scream," he said, in a rush, "she's got all of them the same way, if you don't believe me just look at them for a moment. She's got Samandiriel; I've been running in Heaven since about three weeks after we left the garden; she found out about me when I went dream walking Dean, and she came after me. Gabriel's Caius has been helping me. Jasper, too. Cas, whatever you do, don't you let her take you."

Cas just stared, looking somewhere between shocked and stricken. "Of course I believe you," he said, almost dazed. "Jimmy, I can't undo this binding spell, not without more _time_ , and I may be able to fight these numbers, but not as I am right now."

"Then flee," Jimmy said, squeezing and pressing closer, trying to push the words right into his angel's grace. " _Fly_ , Castiel. Don't stop, don't worry about me, just fly and don't look back."

That hardened Cas's face, and he shook his head. "I will not. I _will not_ leave you."

"I swear, Cas, I'll be okay." Jimmy wasn't above begging. His voice cracked, and thankfully Purgatory allowed tears, because they came. "Don't you dare. Don't you _dare_ give yourself over to her to save me. Cas, I wouldn't be able to live with it, so don't you do that to me."

"I'm not leaving you." There was nothing that would bend in Cas's voice. But even then, he softened his tone, if not his declaration, "Besides, I'm worn and holding us here isn’t doing me any favors; I wouldn't get far, and Leviathan are bound to be on us all in short order. This many angels in Purgatory will draw every vile thing for hundreds of miles."

"Then fight." Jimmy rested their foreheads together, dragging in shaky breaths through his nose. "If you won't flee, then fight."

"If I could turn myself over and free--"

"You _fight_ ," Jimmy interrupted, reaching up and getting a fist into Cas's hair, just to grip. " _We_ fight. We fight, and if we get away, you take me back and we get out of here ourselves."

"And if we don't?" Cas asked, drawing back slightly just to look him in the eyes, aching and desperate and Jimmy knew it was to save, again, what he loved.

"Then we go down fighting now. And someday," Jimmy said, just as desperate for the same, "we crawl back up again. And then we keep going. Because this is what we do, Cas. We keep fighting, until someday we've won. Then the mountains. Then Chenoa."

Precious moments ticked by, while they stared at each other; a man still threaded gold with an angel's grace. An angel, still threaded through blue-white with part of a man's soul. And it was everything there was no time to say, and everything there had been time to say a lifetime ago, and they knew. They knew.

They knew that they had no chance. That there was really only one way their story could go.

"I'm running out of time," Cas said, jaw knotting. Then he did something that made Jimmy’s heart ache and sing, all at the same time; resolute, he leaned in and put their foreheads together again, and he said in a way that left no doubt as to what he was going to do, "I love you. I'll see you soon."

"I'll see you soon," Jimmy answered, tightly, and--

 

 

\--time started again.

And Jimmy knew, and he raised his voice, high and clear and bright, and he _sang, "Castiel, Castiel."_

And across the clearing, Cas burned and manifested his sword in one hand, wings arching up in open defiance, and he raised his voice, layered and brilliant, and he _sang, "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come."_

And the entire assembly of angels fell back slightly under the wash of power of a seraph's voice.

"I don't think you understand how foolish this course of action is," Naomi called, but there was just that little bit of doubt in all of her self-righteousness. That maybe, just maybe, she'd placed all her bets on the wrong hand. "This is against everything you once believed in!"

"Well, we do break all of the rules," Cas said, spinning his blade in hand, prowling around his edge of the clearing to get a better vantage. And when he heard what was coming from above, he _smiled_ , a quiet, fierce little smile of rebellion.

And the Leviathan who were tracking him zeroed in and started coming down like meteorites.

Naomi instantly fell back, and Jimmy almost laughed at the tactical maneuver Cas just pulled; drawing them with his song. Leveling the playing field.

The resulting melee, between angels and Leviathan, and angels and seraph, and seraph and Leviathan, and one human soul, was insanity and chaos. And they came close, they really did.

But of course, they never really stood a chance. Castiel, seraph or no, had been in Purgatory for a year and he wasn't anywhere near full strength. Not enough to fight a company of angels and Leviathan and come away and win. Jimmy, clever or no, was bound by his very soul and the first thing Naomi did when she realized what he was up to was paralyze him, though he managed to break free here or there when she was distracted to throw in his own hand. But they never stood a chance, not really.

And so they wrapped their hearts up in every bit of the love they'd managed to fight for and earn and cling to and salvage, over and over; to their harmonies and their melodies and all of their songs; to every battle and every moment of heartache, and every single time they crawled back up out of the mud, battered and scarred and tired, to go back to the fight anyway, and finally, to two daydreams and one shared dream and one garden and one song.

_In the clearing stands a boxer..._

They lost.

But they fought the whole way to the ground.


	30. XXX.

**XXX.**

**2012**

In the time between when they created a truce and when they were torn apart, they learned many things.

Castiel learned

that there is something bizarre and quietly unnerving about having another presence right alongside your mind; not at the distance of the Host, but right behind the eyes you borrowed with you. Suddenly, everything he did had an immediate witness; he could not abide by the notion of putting Jimmy back to sleep without his consent, and therefore he found himself being _talked to_ and later _sang to_ , but even more importantly, there was this growing sense that he was accountable. Not just to his own internal sense of right or wrong, or divine mandate, or _as it's always been_ , but to some part of himself that didn't want to let this man who spared him down. Didn't want to disappoint that unmerited mercy. He stumbled sometimes. He nearly failed. But the desire to live up to it only grew. It wasn't worship, it wasn't even the same thing as wanting to please Dean. It was something unto itself, and later he would figure out the word for this.

that Jimmy smiles when he sings happier songs, and Castiel can hear it in his voice. It brightens his tenor, and it doesn't take long for those snippets of song to make Castiel smile back, even if only in his own mind, just because it's such a nice sound. It's little wonder he couldn't help but hum back eventually. Until, of course, Jimmy has them singing the Beatles. There was no going back from Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, and even years later, the memory makes him smile and also ache. The song and the following laughter both.

that therefore, despite only having a voice with one layer, Jimmy is a beautiful singer. Not because he hits every note (though he mostly does), not because he always sings in the proper register (usually because he's trying to provoke a smile), but because he sings with his heart; uses it as a language, teases with it, comforts with it, and he does so with such an unabashed honesty that it's impossible not to be taken in by it. It _resonates_ ; it appeals to everything in Castiel that was a singer first and a soldier only comparatively recently.

that it's possible to later regain the voices of the choir, and yet find yourself longing for human voices more.

that despite being a singer first, he would have chosen to be a soldier; he never had to think about it before. Choice never entered into the equation. But now he knows; he would have chosen it as a profession, had he been given that choice. He would have kept singing, too.

that humans are tactile and visceral and he figures out that they must need to be; they have no voices a thought away to join them in song or conversation, they have no connection to the broader universe, they have only themselves. The more he and Jimmy share that one mortal form, the more he understands; touch can hurt and heal, all at once. He rarely uses it; he isn't quite sure how, most of the time, except with Jimmy because Jimmy simply made it a part of them. But he comes to understand the point of it, if nothing else, even if the applications often leave him confused.

that humans only see on one layer of color, and speak and sing on only one layer of sound. It's so _thin_ ; Castiel wonders how they can even begin to interact with the world around them when they can see so little of it. But even so, there comes a time when he's so restricted, and while he finds it unnerving, he does notice some good things about the experience; everything becomes singular and more intense for its singularity. A scent or a color or a touch becomes the world entire, real and immediate, inescapable.

that getting into the habit of breathing is shockingly easy for a being who never had lungs before; this he figured out to some small degree even before Jimmy was awake, but he comes to really understand it after. It can be expression or rhythm or calming or oddly comforting even in pain, the simple act of drawing air in, releasing it again.

that he has a taste for folk music. He likes songs that tell stories. Jimmy often obliges; shares stories through song about taxi drivers or radio DJs or a cleaner from Dayton or some creature void of form, or of a boxer. Humans seem to be so much more openly honest in their music than they are in their spoken word, in their actions, in nearly everything else. Perhaps it is because he was a singer first that he understands lyrics easier than so many of Dean's references, even though he comes to eventually like television.

that there is such a thing as safety. He never knew that. Before there was _unsafe_ , everything was safe, therefore it never once occurred to him to realize that it was. It was only upon losing it that he learned what safety was; it was only upon regaining it that he has any sort of understanding of just how unsafe he's been since he had lost it the first time. It is his Father who taught him to fear. It is Jimmy who teaches him to be safe. It is such a fleeting, elusive thing, but those moments of it are powerful enough that he keeps seeking it somewhere inside of himself long after he's lost all shreds of it.

that mercy and forgiveness can be as painful as divine punishment, but they heal even as they hurt. That honesty is a blade. That this thing you choose is a different thing than what always was. That all of the things he learned from Jimmy Novak, from music to being comforted to safety, are things that changed him forever. That when later he would say he wears Jimmy's scars, he never means the literal battlescars, but he can see the marks anyway, written all over him; etched upon grace and heart and mind, indelible. They endure alongside the blue-white threads of Jimmy's soul.

They endure and endure, and this, he thinks, _this is love_.

 

 

Castiel wishes he had never learned

that there is a wide gulf between loving someone and trusting them. That loving them does not necessarily equal trusting them. That trusting them does not necessarily equal loving them. That you can love without being loved back. In terms of guarding that of his heart which he doesn't want to offer out for wounding, he trusts Jimmy first, Sam second, and Dean last. That it's possible to wish this wasn't so. That it's possible to live with it even when it is so, and love anyway.

that this doesn't negate the ability to be wounded, even guarding yourself.

that there are holes in his memory, and that whatever was taken from him is enough to leave him screaming. He is a soldier and does not do so easily. Not for shame; he has none, pain is pain, but because it's tactically unsound to show a weakness like that. That something could have made him do so and then taken away even his memory of it is terrifying. It makes him feel small, harried. Hunted.

that there is such a thing as safety. Few things hurt so much as losing it, once you've had it given back to you. Sometimes, selfishly, he wishes he had never known it, so that he would not understand the pain of no longer having it.

that losing someone who has lived literally with the same beating heart is like losing your heart entirely. He was not all back together from being alone when he went after Sam, and it meant he wasn't thinking clearly, he wasn't acting with a clear mind, and Sam and Dean paid for his mistakes. Some of it was hubris, but not all of it; some of it was _grief_. He managed after that, still reeling, to convince himself that Jimmy would prefer to rest. (Castiel wishes he could have himself.) He managed to convince himself that he was fine, he even managed to convince himself that he didn’t need that humanity pulling him towards the center of the Earth. He thinks -- he _knows_ \-- that none of what came later would have happened the way it had, had Jimmy been there. He would have probably asked for Dean's help, if he'd even needed it; he wouldn't have bargained with Crowley. He doesn't know what they would have done, but he knows that they would have kept going, because that's what they do.

that it is so much harder to live for someone than it is to die for them. But he endures.

He endures and endures, and when he falters, Jimmy asks him to keep enduring, and this, he thinks, _this is love_.

 

 

This is what they never talk about, in order:

Dean. Jimmy has opinions on Dean. Castiel has opposite opinions on Dean. Given that they must be able to live with one another in the same skin, they don't talk about Dean. Even so, Jimmy never discourages him from interacting with Dean in any manner he sees fit, and he never fails to feel grateful for it. Even if he's not and perhaps shall never be able to figure out Dean himself. Dean is-- Dean. Castiel gave up labeling him a long time ago.

Amelia Novak leaving behind no way for her husband to contact her. He knows why. Even so, it hurts to think about; even years later, it hurts to think about. He understands now, in ways he never would have before, what kind of devastation he leveled upon this family. When last he went to them, as he promised Jimmy, Amelia split his lip and he let her. Claire cried. He felt wretched. But he told them the truth; broken and stumbled, but he told them the truth. Jimmy helped save the world. He died saving the world. Jimmy saved _him_ , more than once. That Jimmy had no part in any of his mistakes since then. That he was sorry. (That he couldn’t ever stop being sorry.) That if they ever wanted to ask more, to contact him via prayer or cell or the Winchesters, and he would come as quickly as he could. It isn't much. It isn't enough. It is something, though.

Being reeducated in Heaven. He tells the story only once, kneeling and awaiting judgment. Jimmy never asks him to tell it again. Other old wounds, yes. But not that one.

Gabriel. It was never that Castiel truly was close to his older brother. It's that Gabriel was a dream. A memory. Something bright and beautiful from a time _before_ there was anger and fear and silence. That when fighting was at its worst, when Castiel was soaked in demon blood and the mangled grace of his own fallen siblings, he could dream there was one archangel left out there who had never been on a battlefield; that their joyful Messenger lived on, white-winged and free of all of this. A little brother’s hidden, protected hero worship, made of the same thing that kept him from singing once he went to war. It was a wistful thing, a childish thing, but it was a sincere thing.

Seeing Gabriel, the _archangel Gabriel_ , reduced to tormenting the Winchesters, tormenting him, left him angry and conflicted and hurt and confused and under all of that, there was still love. It left him frustrated and disillusioned and battered and aching. But he never, ever thought there would come a day when Gabriel wasn't there to be angry and conflicted and hurt and confused and disillusioned and loving about.

And then the day came.

It broke something; in him, in the Host, in the universe itself. From there, there is no going back.

 

 

What they do talk about, in no particular order:

Sam. Sam's position in this madness, Sam's culpability, Sam's personality. Whereas Dean is a topic off-limits, Sam is easy to talk about. It is almost invariably kind, except when Sam is filling his voice mailbox when he's drunk, and when that happens, Castiel is kind to no one except Jimmy. He is not sure even years later if that was for Jimmy's sake, his own, or for the fact Jimmy was the one holding the apple brandy.

Jimmy's childhood. Castiel isn't sure why he finds it as interesting as he does. Everything from old washing machines and the sound they make, to the cardboard lemonade stand Jimmy had when he was eight; he finds himself listening in rapt fascination to these things. None of them make much sense, but all of the stories make him feel warm, and he likes that feeling. He wants to see that house in Chenoa. The one where Jimmy would run around or chase monsters from the basement or listen to his mother's records and dance with her. It sounds something like what Heaven was, before the Fall.

Jimmy's family. He knows how red Claire was when she was born, he knows that Ames likes Christian rock and sometimes eighties music, which apparently has something to do with large hair; he knows that they bought the house in Pontiac only two years before Jimmy disappeared, and before that they rented one not far from there, and before that, they lived in an apartment, and Jimmy sometimes says that apartment was actually his favorite, because it was drafty, but it was cozy, too. He knows how badly Jimmy misses them. He still wishes that he could make it right.

Heaven, before the Fall. Heaven, after the Fall. His siblings. It is uncomfortable, it is painful, and Castiel never particularly likes talking about it, but Jimmy draws him out sometimes before he can realize that he is talking about it.

Music. The stories behind the stories. What the lyrics mean. How much they like a particular song. If he had to pick, he would say that Simon & Garfunkel remain his favorite singers, because their harmonies are particularly well-suited to a human/angel duet, and Art Garfunkel's part suits his own voice just fine, though his has several more layers and happens to be cross-dimensional. Paul Simon's also a very honest storyteller. Admittedly, so is Harry Chapin, who would come in a close second. They offer compassion to their subjects without smoothing over their flaws.

Forgiveness. He waits. He waits and waits for punishment, because that is what he expects; he waits for it for so long that some part of him wishes Jimmy would just get on with it. He thought perhaps Jimmy would, when it came to Jesse Turner. But Jimmy never does. He never punishes. He sets expectations. He is warm and kind and gentle. He is cuttingly honest and exceedingly stubborn and he is not afraid to dig until it hurts, and when he’s done digging, he isn’t afraid to soothe the same. He is sympathetic. He measures his disappointment, and he is faithful once he thinks his reasons for anger are understood. He doesn't withdraw his affection. He is all of these things _before_ he forgives Castiel. The punishment never comes. This is the most bafflingly incredible thing, that the punishment never comes, that one day he is forgiven. 

Castiel still doesn't understand it, except that this, he thinks. This is love.

 

 

 

This is what Castiel does with what he learned, and didn't want to learn:

He is granted mercy, so he makes the best of it that he can; he at first accepts that he will have a constant presence to get used to right next to him, and then later he accepts that he has a partner, and finally he accepts that he did need Jimmy. That what you choose to love, instead of what you were made to love, can be enough to push you onwards when all things conspire to stop you. That he would have never made it to the end of the end of the world without him.

He bleeds.

He screws up.

He stumbles blindly and gets frustrated and has no comfort of having someone higher than himself telling him how to deal with any of it. Jimmy doesn't have all of the answers, either. They just muddle through as best they can.

He gets knocked down. He gets back up.

He keeps going, at first on his own sense of purpose, and later because that is what they do. Sometimes he doesn't think he can. Sometimes he genuinely can't, and then Jimmy is there to lean on and drag them that bit further, until he can find his strength again and throw himself back into it. After Jimmy is gone, he is all too aware how close he is to his own abyss and at least some part of his actions are driven by trying to get back out of that black hole of bad decisions. He fails.

He comes to a number of painful and damning conclusions about his own actions. He has to do this over and over again, because for every single thing he figures out, there are a thousand more branching things that he hasn't, so even years later he still feels he's stumbling blindly on.

Even so, there is a man, who sings to him across the veil, in the lost time between the spaces between the breaths he doesn't need to take. There is a man who sings stories, whose childhood was spent in Chenoa, who lived in Pontiac and had a wife and a daughter, and there is a man who had a hand in saving the angel who had a hand in saving the world.

They go into that last battle clear-headed and clear-witted and with a certainty that there will be no walking back out of it. They go in knowing that there will be nothing after, no great triumph. He uses his wings for what he thinks will be the last time, drawing on the last bit of his own grace and the threads of Jimmy's soul to do so, to put him and Bobby right on the field of battle. He feels an odd sort of giddy defiance, throwing that molotov of holy oil at Michael, not because he wants to hurt his brother (even after it all), but because it is so wildly beyond his station. Which, of course, turns to horror and fear because he can see what Lucifer will do only moments before Lucifer does, and it never fails to irk Castiel even after all of this that he and Jimmy couldn't have been given a soldier's death for the second time. (It is vindictiveness born of this that has him return the non-favor to Raphael later; he also would come to regret that.) Jimmy is incredulous as Castiel tries to dodge it with an admittedly very absurd, bald-faced lie.

The last thing he thinks is, "Oh, not _again_ \--"

 

 

 

Castiel learned

that the most honest thing he has ever known is something he built with an ad salesman from Pontiac, Illinois.

that the one thing he will never regret is singing Jimmy's name in mourning so hard that it will echo long after they're both gone.

that the scars and marks endure, indelible.

that this is love.

 

 

 

What Naomi takes from him is

every memory of it.


	31. XXXI.

**XXXI.**

**2012**

Their story begins and ends the same way. It is not the first beginning, or the first ending. But it begins and ends the same way regardless.

It ends with a song.

 

 

 

"Save the Hallmark. Okay? It's gonna work. Nobody gets left behind."

Dean is fierce in Purgatory. Dean has been, alternately, fierce and imploring and pleading and frightened and angry and wistful and longing and lonely. Castiel knows because Dean prays every day. He remembers the first time he wanted to lean into the offered comfort of Dean's voice, years ago now; he remembers--

Castiel doesn't know why Dean's been so determined. Why, after Dean finds him, Dean is so overtly kind. He doesn't know how to quite understand that, coming from Dean; he has never quite understood anything, when it comes to Dean.

He knows that he has no intention of leaving Purgatory until he's fit to do so, but he doesn't know how to say it; he is surprised by the realization that this will hurt Dean, but he's already committed to staying.

Dean's affectionate stubbornness reminds him of--

He remembers this, but he can't remember everything.

 

 

 

"We still have use for Dean Winchester," Naomi says, shaking her head as though this is regrettable. "We'll deal with him later."

"Use. Do you even hear yourself?" Castiel asks, gasping through bloody teeth, still defiant. She doesn't bother to lie to him. She means to strip him of his alliances and affections, she means to outright steal away what he has fought for and bled for and loved, and he means to fight her until she either kills him or he escapes.

He has rarely been so helpless, but for his own will; he is backed to the wall and for now the wall holds.

"I wish you would understand," Naomi says, a veneer of patience, and he loses the rest to pain.

 

 

 

"I'm not leaving here without you," Dean says, which reminds him of,

"I'm not leaving you there," Jimmy says, which reminds him of,

"I _will not_ leave you," Castiel says.

He means it, Naomi be damned. Every piece she cuts out of him makes him cling harder to every piece left.

It takes her a week to get the first; it goes easier for her after that, but still he fights because it is all he has left to do. Because it's what they do. Because it's the last thing Jimmy asked of him, and so it is everything. He clings by grace and consciousness and nails and teeth and whatever else of him he can cling by, because it is everything.

 

 

 

What he doesn't know, can't know, is that when he screams, Jimmy hears it.

What he doesn't know, can't know, is that this is a masterstroke of cruel practicality underlying Naomi's actions.

What he doesn't know, can't know, is that Jimmy screams, too.

 

 

 

Sometimes, in the brief moments where Naomi goes to deal with other things, he thinks: _No thing that ever flew..._

Millay; Jimmy quoting Millay to counter A.D. Hope's The Death of the Bird, in their garden. She wrote something else, too, in a letter once: _Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world..._

He thinks. He thinks in this brief time, this lost time between the spaces between the breaths he doesn't need to take, that Naomi might take the memory, but she could not fill that hole; she won't be able to erase the scars, she won't be able to wipe away the marks, because--

 

 

 

Zachariah made a mistake, in allowing Castiel to remember the last time he was brought to heel. He doesn't remember Naomi, but he remembers being tortured by Zachariah, and so he doesn't have any innocence to lose to it anymore. That was always the most painful loss, the realization that everything you have loved forever has turned on you and taught you fear. First his Father, then his siblings.

He is less innocent and more tempered and prepared to endure now, but even more importantly, what he fights for is what has loved him back.

It makes Naomi's job now far harder. She tells him as much. "This used to be so much easier; you've become such a tangled mess," she says, with casual disapproval.

She makes him scream, but sometimes the power behind his voice makes her flinch, too.

 

 

 

Memory is

a tapestry

not a tangle; his is made of music

and sometimes mud

and sometimes blood

and sometimes grace

and threads of blue-white soul.

Naomi can't figure out how to get those. It angers and confuses her.

"What is this?" she asks. "What are these threads?"

"My heart," he answers, dazed and half-delirious, human throat wrecked and his own voice shattered, and if it's not strictly a truth since his heart beats within Jimmy Novak's chest, it is not far from the truth.

She never gets those. They endure. Even as he loses more pieces and parts, they endure.

 

 

 

What he doesn't know, can't know, is that Ash is scared stiff because Jimmy won't stop wailing, curled up around himself on the ground of his newly restored Heaven, which is only one step up from a prison. That Jimmy only stops when he outright loses consciousness, to start again upon waking.

What he doesn't know, can't know, is that Caius has found his way back in anyway and does his very best to try to hold the only other man who might understand what it is to be so intimately tangled up with an angel through it.

What he doesn't know, can't know, is the anger and heartbreak in Caius's voice when he explains to Ash, "His angel's screaming."

Because that says it all.

 

 

 

There are songs. One by one, he loses all of them; silly or serious, stories or no.

All but two.

One is a tradition, a call and response; it has called him out of the dark before.

The other he has wrapped around his heart.

 

 

 

"My sword, my shield; I wear your scars all over me," he whispers.

Memory is

a tapestry

not a tangle;

it is etched into grace and heart and mind

and the blue-white threads of a soul.

She can cut into his mind, she can shred his grace and does, but she can't seem to get to the marks Jimmy left on his heart. What she steals in his mind's eye is the memory and context. But she can't get rid of how Castiel has felt, and how he has loved and that he has been forever changed by it. This. This is what later has him fight for Samandiriel, even though he loses. This is what later lets him stop before he kills Dean. This is what later lets him stand in defiance against her again and again, even terrified, even traumatized, even broken. This is what leaves him to long for something he can't remember, and try hopelessly to cling all the harder to what he can.

_This._ This is love.

 

 

 

It takes her five weeks.

Five weeks, unrelenting. She is more brutal the more frustrated she gets. He knows he will lose this; that this story can only really end one way.

He has lost

almost everything.

Except, he knows he loves. He still knows who he loves.

He still knows because

 

 

Jimmy stops screaming, right before the end, and the last time he makes a sound is to _sing_

a broken little three-note, six beat song.

_Castiel, Castiel._

 

 

However far away, his angel hears the faint echo of it, and he doesn't know if it's real,

but even so he responds

_Holy, holy, holy--_

before Naomi makes him scream again.

It ends quicker this time, though, because she knows she acted rashly in anger, and she believes too much in herself and what she's doing to allow pettiness to sully her view of herself, so then she stops for a moment to calm down.

There is another song; the one he has wrapped around his heart

because in this world of

betrayal and lies and half-truths, it is very honest,

and belongs to the most honest thing

he has ever known.

 

 

 

When Naomi finally succeeds in taking away Jimmy, she takes Castiel's voice.

He is again left a broken, winged thing.

Jimmy is now left a broken, human thing.

Caius stares into Jimmy's lifelessly blank blue eyes; the very definition of insanity being hearing his angel scream and not being able act to _stop it_.

Castiel doesn't remember anything about his vessel, but that the last thing he did was give himself up in his daughter's place, and something about hamburgers.

 

 

 

Later, when Castiel kills Samandiriel, he doesn't know why he does. Or why he holds Samandiriel in his heartbreak afterwards.

 

Later, when he's beating Dean, he doesn't know why he is. Once he does, though, he still doesn't know why he takes Dean's face in his hand, instead of touching his forehead, to heal him.

 

 

Much later, Caius releases the Metatron from Naomi's chair. He says, as he picks up the drill with chilling calm, "Not a pike, but it'll do." Metatron lets him have that; he can always rewrite the ending to make himself the hero later, after all.

 

 

 

But before all of that, Castiel stands in a bathroom in a motel room, having just cleaned Purgatory off of himself, and he stares into the mirror.

He doesn't know why he puts his hand up to the glass, or why he thinks he might hear the notes of a forgotten song, but it makes his heart ache anyway.

 

 

 

Before even that

she's found those last pieces Castiel has been clinging to, and she knows she has;

his face and head are bloody, and his grace is in tatters, and his mind is nothing but bright and hot pain. 

He has lost, and he knows he has.

She'll finish this in only a minute, and take the last pieces and parts from him.

 

He has already lost almost everything, except

 

he loves

 

and he knows who he loves for one minute more.

 

And so, because it is _everything_ , he gathers his voice up from the shards she has made it and his courage from places she can't reach it.

And even though he can't remember almost everything, it is still etched upon his heart, so he draws upon every bit of that love that they fought for and earned and clung to and salvaged, over and over; to their harmonies and their melodies and all of their forgotten songs; to every battle and every moment of heartache, and every single time they crawled back up out of the mud, battered and scarred and tired, to go back to the fight anyway, and finally, to two stolen daydreams and one lost shared dream and one lost garden and one remembered song.

And with ragged ferocity, he _sings_

_In the clearing stands a boxer,_

_and a fighter by his trade,_

_and he carries the reminders_

_of every glove that laid him down,_

_or cut him ‘til he cried out_

_in his anger and his shame,_

_'I am leaving, I am leaving,'_

and there he pauses, just a moment

and the echo of a smile is for himself

and for Jimmy

who he hopes can hear this last defiance,

 

 

_but the fighter still remains._


End file.
